Alice Munro’s husband declined to address court after guilty plea, transcript shows

Alice Munro’s husband declined to address the courtroom after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting the author’s daughter but it was noted that he’d donated $10,000 to a program for abuse victims, a court transcript shows.

Gerald Fremlin pleaded guilty to indecent assault in a Goderich, Ont., court on March 11, 2005 – an admission that wasn’t made public until his stepdaughter Andrea Skinner wrote about her childhood abuse in a Toronto Star essay earlier this month.

After he uttered the word “guilty” and the facts of the case were read to the court, Superior Court Justice John Kennedy asked Fremlin if there was anything he wished to say.

“No, Your Honour,” Fremlin replied, according to the transcript obtained by The Canadian Press.

Before that, the Crown noted that Fremlin made a “large donation” of $10,000 to the York Region Abuse Program.

Andrea Skinner’s victim impact statement was entered as an exhibit, but court heard that she did not wish to attend and read it to the court herself. The statement was not read out loud; the transcript shows the judge took some time to go over the four pages himself.

“The victim impact statement seems to make reference to more than what’s before the court, in terms of illicit behaviour,” the judge said.

“And those matters are denied, Your Honour,” Fremlin’s lawyer Paul Ross replied.

In her Toronto Star essay, Skinner wrote that Fremlin’s sexual abuse and harassment started in 1976, when she was nine years old, and continued for several years during her visits to see her mother in Clinton, Ont.

She wrote that after Fremlin climbed into the bed she was sleeping in and sexually assaulted her – the incident that led to the indecent assault charge decades later – he continued to make lewd comments and expose himself to her during car rides.

Skinner’s revelation that Munro eventually learned of the abuse but sided with Fremlin instead of her daughter has left Canada’s literary and academic communities grappling with the Nobel Prize winner’s legacy. Munro died in May at age 92, more than a decade after Fremlin’s death.

Skinner wrote that Fremlin’s sexual abuse and her mother’s betrayal left her “at war with myself” and struggling with her family’s silence.

The court transcript shows that the judge questioned whether Fremlin’s actions were directly tied to Skinner’s need for therapy “20 years later, even almost 30 years later.”

“Am I to take it that this treatment that’s referred to in this victim impact statement is related to what’s admitted to have taken place or not?” Kennedy said.

“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.”

The Crown said it wasn’t in a position to comment on all the reasons Skinner required therapy.

The court heard that the submission to have Fremlin serve a suspended sentence with two years’ probation was agreed to by all the parties involved. The defence lawyer noted that included the victim.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2024.

Sonja Puzic, The Canadian Press