‘So painful to read’: Court transcript reveals ‘disturbing’ skepticism over sex abuse impact on Alice Munro’s daughter

The revelation that the Nobel laureate chose to stay with Fremlin despite knowing about his abuse of her daughter has sent shock waves throughout 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 earlier 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,” she said.

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. 

Kennedy and Ross have since died. Morris, a senior Crown attorney for Huron County, was not in court for the plea; instead, a prosecutor named MacDonald filled in. (His first name is not included in the transcript.)

According to a brief summary of the facts, read by the Crown attorney, Fremlin admitted that in the summer of 1976, when Skinner was nine years old and living with her father in British Columbia, she had come to Ontario to stay with her mother, who was living with Fremlin, then 52, at their shared white cottage-style home in Clinton, Ont.

“One evening, Andrea’s mother was away, and she asked Gerald Fremlin if she could sleep in her mother’s bed, to which he replied, ‘yes,’” the prosecutor said, reading from the agreed facts. Andrea, “later awoke to Gerald Fremlin getting into bed with her … Fremlin pulled up her nightgown and began rubbing her vagina and placed her hand on his penis. He then got up and left the room. The next morning Andrea woke up and was in her bed,” he said.

“Andrea apparently advised her stepbrother and stepmother (about) what happened, but I guess in 1976 it wasn’t the same information, no one knew what (to) do. The matter sort of was set to rest,” the prosecutor continued, before detailing how Skinner confronted Fremlin and Munro about the abuse, first in a letter sent in the 1990s and later by going to police.

“In December of 2004, Andrea felt emotionally strong enough, I guess through various counselling, and reported the matter to Huron detachment OPP, and Mr. Fremlin was arrested,” MacDonald concluded.

Kennedy, the judge, then probed MacDonald about the case, according to the transcript. “The accused was babysitting … And he entered the bedroom and got into bed and rubbed the complainant’s vagina. What else happened here?”

The Crown reiterated that Fremlin had placed her hand on his penis, then added: “That’s pretty much the end of it, your Honour.”

“It wasn’t for an extended period of time,” Ross, the defence lawyer, interjected.

Although she was not present in court that day, Skinner submitted a lengthy victim impact statement that detailed further incidents of abuse by Fremlin, including indecent exposure and propositions for sex.

Fremlin, she wrote, had robbed her of a normal life. “For 29 years I have experienced physical, emotional and spiritual pain as a result of being sexually abused by him,” she wrote, detailing her suffering with bulimia, anorexia and depression. 

Her account also describes the same distressing isolation Skinner wrote of in her essay in the Star, particularly caused by her father’s refusal to intervene — he persistently sent her to stay at the Munro-Fremlin home — and by her famous mother’s denial and continued support of Fremlin.

Fremlin, meanwhile, wrote a series of letters to the family that blamed Skinner for the abuse, referring to her as Lolita to his Humbert Humbert — a reference to Vladimir Nabokov’s pedophile narrator in the novel named for his captive child victim.

The 38-year-old Skinner wrote in 2005: “I needed adults to tell me I mattered more than my mother’s feelings, but no one did that for me. I was totally alone with my pain and fears for my safety.”

After her statement was read in court, Ross noted that Fremlin denied any allegations of other incidents of abuse. (On Tuesday, Skinner told the Star that in 2005 she was told “the rest of what Gerry did could not be charged according to the laws of 1976.”)

The judge also spoke with apparent skepticism over the claim that the 1976 incident was the cause of the long-lasting mental health issues Skinner wrote of in her statement. 

“I can’t accept from the little evidence that I have heard today about this illicit behaviour that all the stuff in the victim impact statement is a consequence of it,” Kennedy said.

Simona Jellinek, a Toronto lawyer specializing in sexual abuse litigation, read the court transcript and said Tuesday she was disappointed by the judge’s comments. Her law firm, Gluckstein Lawyers, has no direct involvement with the case.

“The judge’s statements show a profound lack of understanding that even what might be viewed as a ‘minor’ sexual assault can have catastrophic, long-term psychological impact,” Jellinek wrote in an email to the Star. “It is even more disturbing that these statements were made less than 20 years ago. By 2005 there was significant understanding of the pain and damage that sexual assaults can cause in every aspect of the survivor’s life.”

At the conclusion of the hearing, the judge agreed to the joint submission that Fremlin receive a suspended sentence and probation for two years on the charge of indecent assault, a criminal offence from the 70s that preceded the current charge of sexual assault. Fremlin was also handed conditions not to contact Skinner, nor be in the company of a person under the age of 16, unless an adult is present. As well, Fremlin was required to take counselling as directed by a probation officer and provide a DNA sample.

Fremlin had also donated $10,000 to the York Region Abuse Program, at Skinner’s request.

At the outset of the hearing, the prosecutor asked the judge to impose a publication ban on any evidence that might identify Skinner, who was then in her late 30s.

Earlier this month, a Superior Court judge lifted that ban at Skinner’s request. (The ban did not appear in court records; the Star became aware of the publication ban only after publishing her essay.)