Alice Munro stayed with husband who sexually abused her daughter: essay

globalnews.ca:

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The daughter of celebrated Canadian writer Alice Munro has come forward with a dark secret about her family that is rocking the literary world and re-contextualizing the author’s legacy weeks after her death.

Andrea Robin Skinner, the youngest of Munro’s children, penned a first-person essay in the Toronto Star on Sunday that sheds light on the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, Munro’s second husband. Skinner, who was nine years old when the abuse began, writes that her mother knew about it for decades and stayed silent.

Fremlin’s abuse was swept under the rug, Skinner writes. Even when he was eventually charged with indecent assault against her and pleaded guilty in a 2005 trial, her mother remained loyal to her abuser. Munro stayed married to Fremlin until his death in 2013.

Munro died on May 13 at the age of 92. Headlines of her death dominated Canadian news, with outlets hailing her mastery of the short story and praising her intimate portrayals of the lives of women and girls. Now, conversations are taking place about whether the Nobel laureate’s novels deserve space in the bookshelves of the nation.

Skinner is the youngest daughter of Munro and her first husband Jim Munro. The pair divorced in 1972 and each went on to remarry: Munro to Fremlin, and Jim to Carole Sabiston, a textile artist.

Skinner mainly lived with her father and stepmother in British Columbia, but spent summers with her mother in Ontario. In 1976, the year Munro and Fremlin were married, Skinner was sexually assaulted by her mother’s new husband.

Munro was away and Skinner, who was nine years