Anyone else gutted by this Alice Munro news?

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Big news out of Canada today. Devastating story about Alice Munro and the sexual abuse suffered by her daughter:

www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/my-stepfather-sexually-abused-me-when-i-was-a-child-my-mother-alice-munro-chose/article_8415ba7c-3ae0-11ef-83f5-2369a808ea37.html

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My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him
OPINION
Sun Jul 07 05:00:00 EDT 2024
In 1976, I went to visit my mother, Alice Munro, for the summer at her home in Clinton, Ont. One night, while she was away, her husband, my stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, climbed into the bed where I was sleeping and sexually assaulted me. I was nine years old. I was a happy child — active and curious — who had only just realized I couldn’t grow up to be a sheep-herding dog, a great disappointment, as I loved both dogs and sheep.
The next morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I’d woken up with my first migraine, which developed over the years into a chronic, debilitating condition that continues to this day. I longed to go home, back to Victoria to be with my father, Jim Munro, my stepmother, Carole, and my stepbrother, Andrew.
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.

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2 years probation?? FFS 😱😱😱

Very upsetting! And probs v common. The whole thing is just awful.

Horrible. I'm so sorry for the daughter. She's a few years younger than me. It's true sexual abuse of children was not talked about or taken seriously back then, but how any parent could knowingly place their child in close contact with a known abuser for years is beyond me.

NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/books/alice-munro-daughter-abuse.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

Awful. I don't understand how a mother could do that.

It's fascinating how similar dynamics are in abusive families.

AM sounds like my mother, also someone with a good professional reputation (in domestic violence safeguarding, including children!). I can honestly say the pain of betrayal and the cover up to protect her own image and wants is worse than the abuse by my father. The utter hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance is unbearable, particularly as a child. It makes me doubt everyone and question reality. At times I thought it would drive me mad.

To answer the question, YANBU. However, I long ago learnt to not put people on pedestals or necessarily believe their public personas. Nothing shocks me, sadly.

It's a sad, awful story. But I have to say I am uneasy at the timing of this. Why wait until her mother had died and is unable to speak for herself ? Why not raise this publicly in the decades before ? Her mother did find out 'too late' to stop the abuse.

Doubtless there will be posts accusing me of siding with the abusers. I would never do that. I believe the abused and am sad at what she endured. But I don't see the reparation in what she is doing now.

I agree with this.

I’m very sorry for what she went through, Alice should have done more; and 2 years probation is criminal, just for the record. But I still agree the timing makes me uneasy, and I hope it brings the results the daughter believes it will.

It seems she made attempts to talk to her mother, to continue a relationship. She obviously did talk about it within the family, although not publically, granted.

I think unless you've been in this situation it's hard to understand the power of silence in these families, the fear of speaking out and the repercussions. You are trained to not speak as it will bring more pain on yourself than healing. You are trained to doubt yourself, to blame yourself.

The daughter had to endure not only the abuse but AM's public versons of her family life. I think it is only right that she has a right to reply against the image her mother cultivated.

I have often thought that I could only truly speak out once my mother is dead as her psychological manupulatons and denial were unbearably painful. It's as if I would only be free to truly speak once she has gone.

Absolutely devastating for her daughter. I couldn’t find her name in the article but I wish her peace for the rest of her life.

I'm surprised people seem to be implying that the daughter has an ulterior motive. It is well known that it often isn't until a parent dies that their children feel they can speak out. And what else could AM say? She stayed with him. With the man who.abused her daughter. That is a matter of record.

Should she have stayed silent for ever as her mother is dead? Or wait a year? Two years?

Agree also that it’s not anyone else’s place to criticise the timing of this disclosure. It’s the abuse victim’s choice and presumably part of the process of her needing to re-gain some control after decades of feeling powerless and voiceless.

In addition, there was the pressure of having a high-profile mother. Perhaps the daughter didn’t feel she had the immense emotional strength that would have been required to make public the abuse she suffered from her stepfather while her mother was alive.

(edited for clarity)

The one bright light in this is her siblings. She told her stepbrother, and he immediately believed her. Her sister persuaded her to keep the evidence. Her siblings went together to learn more about abuse survivors and got in touch with her. I hope they can help her through this.

Yes, I hear you @Treeper. And I'm sorry for what you've endured with your mother. Those of us who haven't been in this situation can never have the insight of those who have. I take your point that this may be the best the daughter can do.

Is it wrong though to also see Alice Munro as a victim in this ? I understand that she was the adult and the mother but she was also a woman living with an abuser - it must have been devastating to discover what her husband had done. And women stay for all sorts of reasons.

I'm not saying AM's response was ok. I just feel it's so much easier to label women "BAD" when they are also products of a patriarchal society.

Do you have to have experienced abuse to have more insight than you have managed to muster?

It’s really quite nauseating to see you frame the mother as the victim and question the motives of the actual victim.

Munro was an adult. A famous wealthy adult. If one partner turned out to be a sexual abuser there’s no reason she couldn’t have found another one.

Agreed. It’s very disappointing to read this about Munro whose writing I admire.

The difficulty of speaking out publicly when her mother was alive, particularly when she was elderly, must have been enormous.

Of course, of her mother had dealt with it properly herself her DD might never have felt compelled to publicise it.

It does not matter in the slightest that you feel uneasy about the timing of this. You say you believe her. In that case you should respect her right to tell her story when she feels safe and able to do so. Her mother not being able to respond is also irrelevant as she was not the one sexually abused. The victims feelings are the only ones that matter here.

It’s why I didn’t ever tell anyone. My parents would have done nothing, and nine year old me preferred the fantasy that they would have acted to protect me, had they known.

It’s a horrible, horrible story. Alice Munro remains a writer whose work I revere, but it heightens my sense that what someone can do as an artist bears no relation at all to what they were capable of in life, to their cruelty, viciousness, weakness etc.

Would you be defending her if she was male? She is not a victim in this and her daughter has every right to call her out on it.

The abuser was also the product of a patriarchal society. Should we all feel sorry for him too? Who knows why he did what he did?

I have no patience with this. She was made aware that her husband was sexually abusing her daughter, who was 9. Nine years old! And instead of doing what needed to be done, i.e. protecting her daughter, she decided to ignore it and kept on having her daughter to stay with her, putting her in further danger. I could understand the decision not to go to the police as those were different times and it might not have been treated seriously or sensitively. But the absolute minimum she should have done was keep her daughter away from the stepfather, and she didn't. Absolutely inexcusable.

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.

This made me well up. Well done sister Jenny and siblings. So often the dynamic is ‘seek help for the victim’, which can translate as ‘fix the victim so that we can all exhale’, which is only a few steps from ‘the victim is the problem’.

That Jenny and siblings started from the pov of their own involvement is so brave and perceptive. Of course, they too were victims of a fractured family, watched their father take weak / no action, , all so complex and pernicious.

She is not a victim, but going with this warped way of thinking why would she be any more a victim than the abused himself, why would she be a victim and him not?

So women can do no wrong themselves? Ever?

When a women does something wrong there is an excuse but when a man does he is wrong? Why does this not surprise me

Is it wrong though to also see Alice Munro as a victim in this ? I understand that she was the adult and the mother but she was also a woman living with an abuser - it must have been devastating to discover what her husband had done. And women stay for all sorts of reasons.

I'm not saying AM's response was ok. I just feel it's so much easier to label women "BAD" when they are also products of a patriarchal society.

Frankly, yes. She had agency, and she chose to use that agency to treat her daughter as 'the other woman' rather than as the victim of abuse, and made it all about her. She had been cheated on. She had been hurt. She looked like a fool.

I find it hard to have sympathy for someone that spared none for her child that had been abused from childhood by a man she brought into their home.