Alice Munro’s daughter says mom knew stepfather sexually abused her as a child — but stayed with him anyway

The daughter of renowned author Alice Munro says she was sexually abused by her stepfather as a child – but her mum chose to stay with him despite learning of his horrific crimes.

Andrea Robin Skinner, 58, described In a heartbreaking new article published in the Toronto Star In 1976, when Munro was just nine years old, her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, “climbed into bed while I was sleeping and sexually assaulted me” at her home in Ontario, Canada.

This is just the beginning.

Skinner said that over the next few years, cartographer Fremlin engaged in a series of sickening acts, including exposing himself to her, asking the prepubescent girl about her “sex life,” telling her about her mother’s sexual needs and describing little neighborhood girls he fancied.

“At the time, I had no idea it was abuse,” wrote Skinner, whose late mother won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013 and is considered one of the greatest short story writers in history.

“I thought I was well protected from abuse by avoiding his gaze and ignoring his stories,” said the woman, the youngest of Monroe’s three daughters.

She said she told her father, Jim Munro, about the abuse.

She said her father, who died in 2016, did nothing.

Years later, she wrote a letter to her mother detailing the horrors she suffered at the hands of her stepfather, who died in 2013 at the age of 88. Munro died in May of this year at the age of 92.

“For sixteen years I kept a secret,” Skinner wrote, according to excerpts. “Gerry sexually abused me when I was nine, while you were in China. … My whole life I lived in fear that you would blame me for what happened.”

Skinner said Munro and Fremlin separated briefly after the explosive allegations came to light.

But when Monroe asked her husband about Skinner, he “comforted” her by saying Skinner was not his type and described the 9-year-old girl as a “homewrecker” who “broke into my bedroom for sexual adventures,” the daughter said.

Monroe eventually returned to him, and the two remained together until his death.

“She said she was ‘told too late,’ that she loved him too much, and that if I expected her to deny her own needs, to sacrifice for her children, to compensate for a man’s shortcomings, it was our misogynistic culture’s fault,” Skinner wrote of her mother.

“She insisted that whatever happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.”

Throughout the story, the daughter said, Fremlin told Munro he would kill Skinner if she called the police and wrote a series of letters accusing her of abusing Skinner.

“Andrea’s statement that she was ‘scared’ was a complete lie,” Fremlin claimed. “Andrea destroyed two people who loved each other. … If things get bad enough, I plan to go public with this.”

Skinner said other people had told Munro similar disgusting stories over the years, including a former friend of Fremlin’s who said Munro’s stepfather had exposed himself to his 14-year-old daughter.

Fremlin denied this, she said.

His ongoing abuse caused Skinner to suffer a host of physical and mental health problems, including bulimia, insomnia and migraines, which forced her to drop out of school and nearly ruined her life.

Skinner wrote that years of therapy helped her recover, but her relationship with her mother remained quietly fractured.

“I tried to forgive my mother and Fremlin and continued to visit them and my family,” she wrote. “We all recovered as if nothing had happened. That’s what we did.”

But everything changed when Skinner told Munro she would never let Fremlin near her newborn twins.

Her mother responded that it would be inconvenient for her because she could not drive and that visiting would be difficult.

“I exploded and told her our relationship was over,” Skinner wrote.

Two years later, the daughter finally reported the case to the police.

“For too long I told myself that by suffering alone I had at least helped my family, that I had done the moral thing and done the greatest good for the greatest number of people,” Skinner wrote. “Now I was going to fight for my right to live a full life, to take on the burden of the abuse, and to give it back to Fremlin.”

In February 2005, authorities charged him with “molesting” Skinner sometime in the summer of 1976.

He pleaded guilty in March of that year, and the court sentenced him to two years of probation, among other penalties, she wrote.

Skinner said she was estranged from her family for years after her conviction, but she eventually reconciled with most of her relatives and embarked on a long journey of recovery together.

But Monroe’s situation was different. Skinner never reconciled with him.

“My mother’s fame meant that secrets spread far beyond the family home,” she wrote in the essay, without saying why she chose to detail Fremlin’s crimes now.

“Many influential figures learned some of my story, yet they continued to support and fuel a narrative they knew was false,” Skinner said.

“No one seemed to believe that the truth should be told, that the truth should never be told, and definitely not to the same degree as the lies,” she continued. “Until now.”