Lawyer who prosecuted Alice Munro's husband unsurprised case stayed hidden for years

A former Crown attorney who prosecuted Alice Munro’s husband says he always assumed a desire to protect the author’s reputation was among the reasons why Gerald Fremlin’s sexual abuse of Munro's daughter went unreported even after he pleaded guilty.

Fremlin’s case also may have escaped public attention because it moved unusually fast through the Goderich, Ont., court system in early 2005, Robert Morris said in an interview.

When Munro’s youngest daughter Andrea Robin Skinner revealed in the Toronto Star that her mother chose to stay with Fremlin after learning of the abuse, many wondered why the story stayed hidden for so long.

“Not too many people knew about it,” Morris said of Fremlin’s guilty plea to a charge of indecent assault dating back to 1976.

Morris, who is now a criminal defence lawyer in Goderich, thought that’s because most of Munro’s family didn’t want “to harm her reputation” by revealing that her husband was a sexual offender.  

“I just assumed everyone was protecting the mother,” Morris said. “I mean, I know that the daughter isn't happy with how it was handled, but (Munro) didn't do anything wrong criminally.”

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In her essay published earlier this month, Skinner wrote that Fremlin sexually abused and harassed her starting at age nine, during her visits to see her mother in Clinton, Ont., a small town not far from Goderich.

She was in her 20s when she told her mother about the abuse, but Munro sided with Fremlin and stayed in the marriage until his death, Skinner wrote, detailing how her childhood trauma remained a family secret for decades.

Skinner wrote that her father, Munro's first husband Jim Munro, never acted decisively to protect her and that her Nobel Prize-winning mother's fame meant "the silence continued." Her sisters described to the Toronto Star in their own words how the family settled under a dome of silence, torn between their love for their mother and what had happened to Skinner.

"We all, in our way, asked that Andrea live a lie," Jenny Munro, who cared for Alice Munro until her death in May at age 92, wrote in her own first-person essay for the Star over the weekend.

The Munro family secret didn’t come to light even as Skinner eventually reported Fremlin to police – submitting as evidence letters he had written admitting to the sexual contact – and he was handed a suspended sentence with two years' probation.

Morris said Fremlin’s case started in provincial court, where he waived his right to a preliminary hearing on Feb. 21, 2005, and elected to have the matter heard by a judge alone in Superior Court. There was no trial and Fremlin entered his guilty plea in the higher court less than four weeks later, on March 11, 2005.

“So that's, you know, a little unusual to have it done with so quickly,” Morris said. “My kind of sense of it was that they wanted to get it in and out of the system.

"The least time it's before the court, you know, the least opportunity there is for someone to report on it," he said, noting that it's not uncommon for criminal cases to go through the Goderich courthouse without any media coverage.

Morris said Fremlin's defence lawyer was Paul Ross, who died earlier this year. Ross's son Quinn Ross, the managing partner of the Ross Firm, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Morris said he was aware of Alice Munro's celebrity status as he prosecuted Fremlin but he doesn't recall if she was in the courtroom to see her husband plead guilty.

A retired Ontario Provincial Police detective who informed Fremlin of the charge against him in 2004 remembered how furious Munro was during the arrest.

Sam Lazarevich told The Associated Press last week that Munro accused her daughter of lying and defended her husband – a reaction that disturbed him.

Looking back on the case nearly 20 years later, Morris said he's not surprised Fremlin's conviction stayed buried until after Munro's death.

"I've seen that in other cases with other families," he said. "They wait 'till the matriarch dies or, you know, some like larger-than-life family figure dies and now the story comes out, either publicly or just within the family itself."

Skinner told the Star she tried to get her story out over the years, efforts that included contacting Munro's biographer and emailing some news outlets, to no avail.

"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," she wrote in her essay.

Morris said "it's a good thing" Skinner's story has finally been shared so widely because it exposes the harm done by sexual predators and may help stop someone else from taking advantage of children.

"We're certainly into being more transparent about what goes on in families," he said. "You don't wanna see this kind of abuse going on, ever."

With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2024.