My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him

On the day I finally did fly home, Fremlin took me to the airport by himself. My mother was busy. In the car, he asked me to play a game called “show me.” When I said no, he made me tell him about my “sex life,” prying me for details of innocent games I played with other children. Then he told me about his sex life.

Back in Victoria, I told Andrew what had happened, trying to make a joke of it. He didn’t laugh. He said I should tell his mother right away. I did, and she told my father, who decided to say nothing to my mother.

I was relieved at first that my father didn’t tell her what had happened to me. She had told me that Fremlin liked me better than her, and I thought she would blame me if she ever found out. I thought she might die. As relieved as I was, my father’s inability to take swift and decisive action to protect me also left me feeling that I no longer truly belonged in either home. I was alone. 

I returned to the home in Clinton every summer for the next several years. My stepfather’s volatile moods dominated our lives, and I spent many days at the auction barn down the road, with the animals who were waiting for pickup. When I was alone with Fremlin, he made lewd jokes, exposed himself during car rides, told me about the little girls in the neighbourhood he liked, and described my mother’s sexual needs. At the time, I didn’t know this was abuse. I thought I was doing a good job of preventing abuse by averting my eyes and ignoring his stories. 

When I was 11, former friends of Fremlin’s told my mother he’d exposed himself to their 14-year-old daughter. He denied it, and when my mother asked about me, he “reassured” her that I was not his type. In front of my mother, he told me that many cultures in the past weren’t as “prudish” as ours, and it used to be considered normal for children to learn about sex by engaging in sex with adults. My mother said nothing. I looked at the floor, afraid she might see my face turning red.

By the time I was a teenager, I was at war with myself, suffering from bulimia, insomnia and migraines. I was a high-achieving high school student with a strong wish to help others. But my private pain was taking a toll. In university, my grades plummeted as bulimia took over my life. I dropped out of an international development program at the University of Toronto and gave up my dream of working abroad. By the time I was 25, I couldn’t picture a future for myself.

One day, during that period, while I was visiting my mother, she told me about a short story she had just read. In the piece, a girl dies by suicide after her stepfather sexually abuses her. “Why didn’t she tell her mother?” she asked me. A month later, inspired by her reaction to the story, I wrote her a letter finally telling her what had happened to me. 

As it turned out, in spite of her sympathy for a fictional character, my mother had no similar feelings for me. She reacted exactly as I had feared she would, as if she had learned of an infidelity. 

She called my sister Sheila, told her she was leaving Fremlin, and flew to her condo in Comox, B.C. I visited her there and was overwhelmed by her sense of injury to herself. She believed my father had made us keep the secret in order to humiliate her. She then told me about other children Fremlin had “friendships” with, emphasizing her own sense that she, personally, had been betrayed. 

Did she realize she was speaking to a victim, and that I was her child? If she did, I couldn’t feel it. When I tried to tell her how her husband’s abuse had hurt me, she was incredulous. “But you were such a happy child,” she said. 

Meanwhile, Fremlin acted quickly. He told my mother he would kill me if I ever went to the police, and wrote letters to my family, blaming me for the abuse. He described my nine-year-old self as a “homewrecker,” and said my family’s failure to intervene suggested they agreed with him. He also threatened retribution:

“Andrea invaded my bedroom for sexual adventure” — I had asked Fremlin the night the abuse took place if I could sleep in the spare bed in the room he shared with my mother — “ … for Andrea to say she was ‘scared’ is simply a lie … Andrea has brought ruin to two people who love each other … If the worst comes to worst I intend to go public. I will make available for publication a number of photographs, notably some taken at my cabin near Ottawa which are extremely eloquent … one of Andrea in my underwear shorts …”

(I’d forgotten about the photos until I read this letter. I was 11 when most of the pictures were taken.)

In spite of the letters and threats, my mother went back to Fremlin, and stayed with him until he died in 2013. She said that she had been “told too late,” she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children, and make up for the failings of men. She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.

I believe my mother answered her own question about the girl in the story. She didn’t tell her mother because she would rather die than risk her mother’s rejection.

Years passed. My father continued to have lunches with my mother, never mentioning me. I asked him about these lunches before he died. He told me I just never came up in their conversations. My siblings and parents carried on with their busy lives. I tried to forgive my mother and Fremlin and continued to visit them and the rest of my family. We all went back to acting as if nothing had happened. It was what we did.

The denial continued for the next 10 years. Inside, I was still at war with this thing, this ugliness. Me. But gradually, through therapy, I learned that it wasn’t my fault. I fell in love with a good man, got married, and had children. My dream of being a sheep-herding dog wasn’t so impossible after all. I spent my days running after my twins, and my evenings lying flat-out exhausted somewhere around the house. Today, safeguarding the vulnerable is still the driving force of my life. I help people who want to heal their trauma by connecting with horses.

I ended contact with my mother after my twins were born. At first, I told her only that I could never see Fremlin again, never have him near my children. She explained how inconvenient it would be for her to visit me on her own, since she didn’t drive. I exploded, and told her our relationship was over.

Two years later, when I was 38, I read an interview in the New York Times with my mother, in which she described Gerald Fremlin in very loving terms. She said she was lucky to have him in her life, and declared that she had a “close relationship” with all three of her daughters, including me. For three weeks I was too sick to move, and hardly left my bed. I had long felt inconsequential to my mother, but now she was erasing me.

I wanted to speak out. I wanted to tell the truth. That’s when I went to the police to report my abuse.

For so long I’d been telling myself that holding my pain alone had at least helped my family, that I had done the moral thing, contributing to the greatest good for the greatest number. Now, I was claiming my right to a full life, taking the burden of abuse and handing it back to Fremlin. 

On Feb. 25, 2005, four months after the interview came out, Gerald Fremlin was charged with “indecently assaulting” me sometime between July 1 and Aug. 31, 1976. (Without Fremlin’s letters, the case would have been much weaker. I had once tried to destroy them, out of shame, but luckily my sister Jenny stopped me.) 

On March 11, 2005, he pleaded guilty on arraignment, without a trial, and was sentenced to two years’ probation. He was also ordered by the court to avoid any activity that brought him into contact with children under the age of 14 for two years.

I was satisfied. I hadn’t wanted to punish him. I believed he was too old to hurt anyone else. What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I hadn’t deserved what had happened to me.

I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother. I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser. 

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. My mother’s fame meant the silence continued.

For years after Fremlin’s conviction, I was estranged from my family of origin. They didn’t seem to understand the pain of abandonment I still carried, and when I was with them, I felt I was on trial to explain myself. I needed to focus on healing instead.

Then, in 2014, my sister Jenny reached out. She told me that she and my other siblings, sister Sheila and stepbrother Andrew, had gone to the Gatehouse, in Toronto, an organization that helps survivors of childhood sexual abuse. They went to learn more about my separation from them. They wanted to better understand themselves and each other, and to process their part in the silence around Fremlin’s abuse of me.

Until Jenny wrote, I had thought my disappearance was a relief to my siblings. I was wrong. They were hurting too.

I was 49 years old when I went to the Gatehouse for the first time. Being there gave me the courage to start opening up to my family. Now, eight years later, I have them back in my life, and the healing continues. I belong to a whole community at the Gatehouse for whom telling the truth is shame-busting medicine.

As for my relationship with my mother, I never reconciled with her. I made no demands on myself to mend things, or forgive her. I grieved the loss of her, and that was an important part of my healing. 

Children are still silenced far too often. In my case, my mother’s fame meant that the secrecy spread far beyond the family. Many influential people came to know something of my story yet continued to support, and add to, a narrative they knew was false.

It seemed as if no one believed the truth should ever be told, that it never would be told, certainly not on a scale that matched the lie.