A SECRET IN ALICE MUNRO'S HOUSE: Judge cast doubt on impact of abuse

Transcript from 2005 court hearing painful to read,’ says Munro’s daughter

- BETSY POWELL

"(Gerald) Fremlin and my mother had power and support, the very things taken from me by the abuse," Andrea Robin Skinner, the daughter of writer Alice Munro, said Tuesday after reviewing the transcript of a 2005 court hearing.

On March 11, 2005, the husband of renowned Canadian author Alice Munro uttered just four words in a court proceeding that remained secret for nearly two decades.

"Guilty," Gerald Fremlin said in a Goderich, Ont., courtroom, admitting to molesting his stepdaughter Andrea Skinner when she was just nine years old. "No, Your Honour," he added minutes later, asked by the judge if he had anything to say before the end of the brief hearing.

The revelation that the Nobel laureate chose to stay with Fremlin despite knowing about his abuse of her daughter has sent shock waves through the literary community and beyond after Skinner first detailed the events, including her decision to go to the police, in a startling essay published by the Star this month.

The contents of the 2005 court hearing can now be reported after the Star obtained a transcript that reveals, in part, how the judge expressed skepticism over Skinner's account that the abuse led to a lifetime of pain.

It is "so painful to read," Skinner told the Star on Tuesday after reviewing the transcript of the hearing, which she did not witness in person. "Fremlin and my mother had power and support, the very things taken from me by the abuse." Fremlin's guilty plea came just three months after police charged him based on Skinner's complaint and letters Fremlin wrote, implicating himself.

In court that day, Superior Court Justice John Kennedy heard Fremlin's plea and received a joint submission on the appropriate sentence, which was agreed to by prosecutor Bob Morris and defence lawyer Paul Ross, a family friend of Fremlin and Munro.