Anyone else gutted by this Alice Munro news?

[lifesrichpageant]

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

@SeasickAccountant disgusting comment.

A mother who protects an abuser is not a victim.

She was wealthy and influential. It's not like she couldn't leave.

I can't understand the role her father and step mother played! Over my dead body would my child return to her mother even.

Munro was not a victim. She chose to stay with the man who sexually abused her 9 year old daughter. She had the money and agency to leave - she was not dependent on him. She chose the abuser over her daughter. She is NOT a victim.

The reason you speak up even if it's too late- because silence is a terrible burden. It's like living in an alternate reality.

In one world, her mum and stepdad were respectable people with a good family network, career and friendships. She addressed that with the step father- legal recognition that she had suffered, that he had been abusive.

She needed to address it with her mother too- she existed, she was abused and traumatised and suffered and her mother... only cared that it disrupted her own life and image.

It takes massive courage to be the lone voice speaking against the rest of the world and particularly against your parents. So she didn't complete the task until her mum was dead.

That's ok. It doesn't negate the power of forcing the alternate reality back into line with the truth.

When Ulrika Johnson published a memoir referring to her rape, she was massively criticised. But if she left it out it wouldn't have been her story. It would have been a lie.

I carry a similar story and the prevailing assumption that 'it happens to someone else' is really disconcerting. People assume it didn't happen to their friends, colleagues, family. But of course it did.

My mother found out I was being sexually abused by my older brother. She blamed me. I was 7. My mother made herself the victim in everything and AM’s reaction reminds me of my mother. Shut up, pretend everything is ok while I was turned into the family skivvy, I suppose to punish me.
I completely agree with the writer when she says not being believed by her mother was worse than the abuse. It was like a slap in my face every time she looked at me. I was treated as the lowest of the low for the rest of the time I was in contact with them.
After reading this woman’s account I can only wish she finds peace. I’m have to wash my hands a few dozen times. Abuse leaves scars for ever.

Edit to clarify: And Munro was never a victim. Her immediate reaction should have been to stand up for her daughter. Call the police on her disgusting husband. The writer’s father and stepmother should have done the same. She only thought of protecting herself. Not her child. Not other children. Just herself.

I thought the same. It's a lovely way of them reaching out, letting her know that they loved her and they were sorry - and proving it with their actions.

What Munro did was as bad as what her stepfather did, and I would imagine even more devastating. You are colluding with Munro's narcissistic 'poor me, I'm the victim' stance here.

Munro was never a victim. Her immediate reaction should have been to stand up for her daughter.

This times a thousand

It is all just so awful. I do not agree that Alice M was a victim - however I do wonder about her own SA history. Do these things get normalized within families? e.g. it happened to me, therefore if it happens to my child, it is 'normal"?

Trying to have a more nuanced understanding of this monstrous behaviour on the mother's part.

The victim is already crushed and damaged, it's too easy for others to kick them some more so they never feel able to speak up again. Much easier than standing up to a predatory man.
I have seen this time & time again.

How funny. My thoughts when I read the story earlier were that it was extremely decent of her to wait until her mother has passed. She went to her grave without having to face the consequences of her actions.

The bit that was truly unforgivable for me (well, it all is but this really gutted me) was that AM accused her daughter of misogyny, in attempting to make her responsible for her husbands abuse (in terms of having her life ruined by it, her career affected by it etc if she outed her husband and ended her marriage and so forth). She accused her daughter of that. Doesn’t matter whether it was instead of or in addition to taking it up with the stepfather. She put that on her daughter’s shoulders.

This is just awful and disturbing in so many ways. In one of the reports it stated that Alice Munroe knew her husband had "friendships with children." I am wondering then if there are nore victims of this terrible man? And would not Alice Munroe be guilty of something if she knew and never said anything??

The neighbours' daughter was clearly a victim. So at least two that we know about.

Yes, it raises that difficult question about how one can separate the artist and their work from who they are as a person and how we can still 'consume' their works. Going back through the centuries there are many celebrated and admired writers/actors/painter/sculptors/musicians who were pretty despicable people in 'real life'.
“Harder to accept the truth that people who make transcendent art are capable of monstrous acts" (Michelle Cyca on Twitter today)

As for the timing, yes of course she felt she had to speak up. She cannot face the only public legacy of her mother being a lie. She's quoted saying "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."

It's abhorrent that Alice betrayed her child when she came forward. It makes me wonder whether she ever really tried to protect her from this abuse in the first place. I regard her as complicit.

I am really upset by this too. I always loved her writing because she showed (I thought) so much subtlety and nuance about family life.
Her daughter is very brave. Munro is a Canadian icon so she has a whole national and global response to navigate here as well as family dynamics.

@Tippet I am sorry you went through this. I feel that a lot of folks reading this story will feel echoes in their own lives. My DH's family has a 'secret' like this and a woman who chose her man over her daughter. I feel it is depressingly common. I hope you are getting the support and love you deserve later in life.

i understand. it's like AM had control over the narrative, for years, decades, and now finally, there's no opponent in the battle of two narratives. Cover up v Truth.

It comes down to secret-keeping and how women are often expected to keep secrets for powerful men. AM chose her man over her daughter and expected her daughter to toe the line and do the same. I notice it playing out in my own family life through the generations. If I had DD's I would try and teach them not to do this!!

Yes, a famous, but also a very 'wealthy' woman- which makes her betrayal of her daughter all the more heinous imho. Historically, in Ireland at least, economically dependent women were often forced to 'turn a blind eye'. For Alice though, there was no such excuse.

I see this play out in my family too. The betrayal is not sexual abuse but I cannot tell my mother anything, can't give new information, her perspective is the only perspective and any attempt to advocate for yourself, correct various distortions of the truth or reject derogatory labels is met with similar reaction of her being hurt by me. In a situation where I tell her that she hurt me, she is the victim of that.

I would have thought that somebody who wrote about family dynamics would have been more emotionally healthy. Very disappointing.

I think things do get normalised. My father was abusive to all of us, and my mother saw nothing wrong in the abuse that me and my sister endured at his hands and the hands of our boyfriends and husbands.
My mother actively encouraged and facilitated a man of 34 to pick me up (at 17) late at night - obviously for sex - and drop me home early in the morning so that I could go to school. She had brought him home and told me to go out with him. She had a crush on him herself and liked that fact that he had money. When I taught girls of the same age and became a parent I realised how horrible that was.
My mother and sister also saw nothing wrong in allowing a 19 year old man to have sex with my 12 year old niece.
i am no contact with my family of origin.

I agree. One wonders if there was emotional dependence, insecurity, weakness, self-centredness that one often sees in mothers who collude with abusive partners. There’s generally weakness somewhere. Lack of strength and integrity when it matters.

Absolutely. Munro's rationalisation of her behaviour, as reported by her daughter, regarding her personal ' needs', and why she shouldn't have to 'sacrifice' her relationship to protect her, made me want to gag.

This happened in my family and it's weirdly validating to see it written out like this. Abuser and his wife are/were alcoholics. Since his death the abused stepdaughter is trying to spin her mum's actions as a consequence of the abuse the mum received from the husband.

Abuser also SA his own younger sisters, so at least two generations of his abuse. I don't like to speculate but it seems inevitable that there were many more.

It blew my family apart and it's very painful to know that the women who were on the receiving end of the abuse also failed to protect their own children and other children in their care. A lot of the men in the family knew and also failed/refused to take any action, which is even more perplexing to me. It's such a betrayal, maybe worse than the original abuse, which is more straightforward to contextualise.

I assume it's very common but would be interested to see if there's any research in this area.

Just for context, in my family the police were involved but were both useless and limited in what they could do under the circumstances. It's hard to convey the difference between how this was seen in the past and how it's seen now. There was a sense of trying to singlehandedly overturn really inevitable social forces. The women who chose to leave to protect their kids were at best out in the wilderness unless they had support from family or friends. In my family they were vulnerable to further abuse at the hands of professionals as the abuser had powerful friends including police.

Haven't been able to read the whole article but Alice Munro is complicit as is her Dad and stepmother if all three did nothing to stop the abuse. Police should have been called straight away. I am appalled if her stepbrother recognised straight away that adults needed to intervene and nobody did.
(This is assuming what happened without full access to the article. Does it say why her own father did nothing?). Not fit to be parents.