Remarried Husband's Sexual Abuse Ignored Despite Awareness
Short Story Wins Booker Prize and Multiple Literary Awards
Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author who passed away last May, has become embroiled in controversy following revelations from her biological daughter. It was disclosed that Munro continued her marriage despite being aware that her daughter had been sexually abused by her stepfather during childhood. The whistleblower is Andrea Robin Skinner, Munro's daughter from her first marriage.
On the 7th (local time), Skinner revealed her mother's dark secret to the Canadian media outlet Toronto Star, saying, "I hope my story becomes part of what people say about my mother." Living with her biological father, Skinner visited Munro's home in Ontario, Canada, during the summer of 1976 when she was nine years old. One night, Gerald Fremlin, Munro's then-husband and Skinner's stepfather, climbed into Skinner's bed and molested her. Skinner described this as being "sexually assaulted."
The late Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Alice Munro as she appeared before her passing in May. [Photo source=AP·Yonhap News]
After returning to her original home, Skinner told her father and stepmother about the incident, but her father did not inform Munro. Over the next few years, Skinner met Fremlin several more times. During car rides, Fremlin would describe Munro's sexual desires or talk about young girls in the neighborhood he liked. These behaviors stopped when Skinner became a teenager. However, Skinner suffered long-term aftereffects such as bulimia, insomnia, and migraines. "By the time I was 25, I was so sick and empty that I couldn't live properly," she said.
While Skinner's pain grew, Munro's reputation continued to rise. Years later, at age 25, Skinner sent a letter to her mother confessing the earlier abuse. However, Munro reportedly reacted not with sympathy but as if Skinner had committed an affair. Fremlin admitted to the sexual abuse in a letter but blamed Skinner for it. He called nine-year-old Skinner a "homewrecker" and claimed she had entered his room first.
Monroe, known as the "master of short stories," passed away in May at the age of 92. The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, making him the first Canadian to receive the honor, stating that he "perfectly honed the short story, overshadowed by the novel, into the most complete form of art." [Photo by Reuters·Yonhap News]
Munro continued to ignore the matter and remained married to Fremlin until his death in 2013. In her lifetime, Munro wrote a short story about a woman who committed suicide after being sexually abused by her stepfather. After seeing Munro describe Fremlin as a "brave figure" in a magazine interview around 2003, Skinner reported Fremlin to the police. In 2005, Fremlin was convicted by an Ontario court but received a two-year suspended sentence due to his advanced age.
Munro, known as the "master of the short story," died at the age of 92 last May. The Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, making her the first Canadian recipient, praising her for "perfectly refining the short story into an art form overshadowed by the novel." She received several literary awards, including the Booker Prize. After divorcing her first husband in 1972, she remarried geographer Fremlin in 1976.
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