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.