Weeks after Alice Munro’s death, daughter tells of dark family secret

“I also wanted this story, my story, to be part of the stories that people tell about my mother,” Skinner continued. “I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t deal with the reality of what happened to me and the fact that my mother, when confronted with the truth, chose to stay with my abuser and protect him.”

Attempts to reach Skinner on Sunday were unsuccessful.

Skinner wrote that the abuse began in 1976, when she was 9 years old and visited Fremlin, then in his 50s, and her mother, who was in 40s. She said he climbed into the bed where she was sleeping and sexually assaulted her. Skinner said she told her stepmother, who then told Skinner’s father. Her father did not confront Munro.

Over the next few years, Skinner wrote, Fremlin exposed himself to her on car rides, described her mother’s sexual needs and “told me about the little girls in the neighborhood he liked.” According to the Toronto Star article, he lost interest in Skinner when she became a teenager.

Over time, Munro’s reputation as an author grew. When she died, she was widely considered one of the greatest short story writers of all time. Her work often focused on women at different stages of life, mixing “ordinary people and extraordinary subjects,” according to her obituary in the New York Times. In 2013, at the age of 82, she was awarded the Nobel Prize.

When Skinner was in her twenties, Munro expressed sympathy for a character in a short story who commits suicide after being sexually abused by her stepfather. Afterward, Skinner wrote, she decided to tell her mother about the abuse she had suffered.