Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature - Daughter accuses Alice Munro of keeping silent about abuse by her stepfather
The daughter of the late Canadian Literature Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro stated that she was sexually abused by her stepfather as a child. She reportedly told her mother about it later, but the latter did nothing and stayed with her husband. "We all just acted as if nothing had happened," wrote Andrea Robin Skinner in the Toronto Star on Sunday.
Munro married her second husband Gerald Fremlin in 1970. Skinner reported in a long article that her stepfather came into her bed in 1976, when she was only nine years old, and sexually assaulted her. Fremlin also reportedly took advantage of his stepdaughter when they were alone in later years.
Alice Munro remained with Gerald Fremlin
According to Skinner, Munro didn't tell her mother about the assaults until she was 25 years old. "But my mother reacted exactly as I had feared," she wrote. - Munro stayed with Fremlin and remained silent. At the age of 38, Skinner went to the police, as her mother had overpraised Fremlin in an interview. Fremlin confessed to the offense in 2005 for violating her sexual self-determination.
Munro died in May at the age of 92. She wrote, "I want this story, my story, to be part of the stories people tell about my mother."
Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, the jury praised her as "the master of contemporary short stories". Among her most famous works are "Why Do You Want to Know?", "The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose", "Did You Love Him?", "Open Secrets", and "Runaway".
- Andrea Robin Skinner, a daughter of the renowned Canadian Literature Nobel laureate Alice Munro, highlighted in a Toronto Star article on Sunday, detailed her experiences of being sexually abused by her stepfather as a child, despite sharing this with her mother.
- Despite being a notable figure in literature, Alice Munro remained with her abusive second husband, Gerald Fremlin, even after her daughter Andrea Skinner estimated sharing her experiences when she was 25 years old, choosing to stay silent against her fears.
- The late Alice Munro, who was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, expressed her desire for her daughter's harrowing account of abuse to be integrated into the narratives surrounding her mother's legacy, showcasing her candidness in literature.
