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Fifty-five years later, she was inspired to speak pub- licly about it for the first time after learning that Fremlin had later sexually abused one of Munro’s daughters, Andrea Robin Skinner, when she, too, was nine. Morrey, 64, says her experience was profoundly different from Skinner’s. Last month, Skinner described in an essay for the Toronto Star how for years after Fremlin assaulted her, she was sent back to her mother’s home every summer and continued to be abused by him. Her mother’s decision to stay with Fremlin after learning of the sexual abuse has tarnished the legacy of one of Canada’s most celebrated authors. Munro died in May at age 92. When Fremlin targeted Morrey, she said, her mother threw him out of the house immediately, and Morrey never saw him again until she was an adult. Looking back now, she said she doesn’t feel “particularly traumatized” by the incident. “I never grew up feeling like I did something wrong, ever,” she said in a phone interview on Monday. “I felt like I was completely vindicated because I was believed instant- ly.” Morrey, who first told her story to the Toronto Star, hopes her decision to speak out will help other parents understand how important it is to act decisively. “Aside from Alice Munro’s fame, aside from everything, if something happens and your child tells you, then believe them and act accordingly,” she said. It was only after Skinner’s essay was published that it became known Fremlin, who died in 2013 at the age of 88, had pleaded guilty in 2005 to indecently assaulting his stepdaughter. Fremlin was a close family friend of Morrey’s parents. They had attended the University of Western Ontario to- gether, along with Alice and Jim Munro, who would become the author’s first husband and the father of her three daugh- ters, including Andrea. Morrey’s older sister, Marianne Webb, said Fremlin visit- ed their family often and she doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t friends with her parents. She said he never acted inappropriately toward her and she remembers being “kind of jealous” that he would send her little sister postcards from his travels around the world. Now, she sees the behaviour as “subtle grooming.” Morrey, who is seven years younger than Webb, said she loved getting postcards, gifts and attention from Fremlin and saw him as something of an uncle. Then, when Fremlin was visiting in 1969, nine-year-old Morrey went into his room one morning to ask what he wanted for breakfast. She said he threw his blanket off and exposed himself to her. Shocked, she left the room and began making oatmeal. She said Fremlin then followed her to the kitchen and told her, “I shouldn’t have flashed my c—k at you.” “I’d never heard adults talk that way or use that kind of word,” she said. “My parents were very clinical about stuff.” But Fremlin went on, she remembers. “Then he said, “OK, so you got to see me. Maybe you’d like to show me yours.’” At that point, Morrey said, she left the room and woke up her mother to tell her what had happened. “My mother went berserk when I told her,” she said, and immediately got the girls to leave the house. Webb said they waited at the end of the street until they saw Fremlin’s car drive off. When they got back, Morrey said, her parents told her Fremlin was never coming back to the house. After that, they didn’t speak of it again, she said. Morrey didn’t see Fremlin again until nearly two decades later, at a 1986 launch for one of Munro’s books. Munro and Fremlin had married 10 years earlier. “I went up to him and I said, ‘You probably don’t recognize me but I’m Jane Webb,’ and he just looked terrified,” she said. She didn’t confront him about the incident from her child- hood, but she wanted to scare him. MAURA FORREST “He scared me when I was little and I wanted to look him in the eye and watch him squirm. I wanted him to worry about what I might do or say,” she said in an email. “I guess I wanted to show him that he wasn’t the only person with power.” Morrey has not spoken with Skinner, who was assaulted by Fremlin in 1976, several years after Morrey says he targeted her. But Morrey said she always wondered whether Fremlin had other victims and whether anything might have happened with any of Munro’s daughters. Now, she hopes other potential victims will feel safe enough to come forward. “As victims, there’s no shame in it,” she said. Years after the incident, when Morrey was an adult, her mother struck up a new friendship with Fremlin. At that point, she said, her relationship with her mother was strained and she never confronted her about the friendship, which was short-lived. Webb also suspects their father quietly maintained a friendship with Munro’s husband. Both her parents have since died. Ultimately, though, she’s grateful to her mother for doing “the right thing in the moment,” especially when she con- trasts her experience with Skinner’s. “That was probably the most important thing she ever did for me,” she said. — The Canadian Press CHAD HIPOLITO / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Alice Munro’s late husband Gerald Fremlin sexually assaulted his stepdaughter for years and allegedly exposed himself to the nine-year-old daughter of his friends. ARTS ● LIFE I ENTERTAINMENT KINSEY DONALD ● FROM C1 The short list featured five of the top Manitoban plays as determined by a volunteer jury: Between Gigs by Heather Madill and Joseph Aragon, a two-time Rintoul winner; House of Gold by Thomas McLeod; The Ethan in the Room by Ethan Stark, a runner-up last year; and as runner-up, The Mailroom by 2023 Rintoul winners JHG Creative. “I got to pay my team, which was really awesome. It’s re- ally important to pay indie artists, especially when they’re in school or just out. The whole ‘paying in exposure thing’ just doesn’t work in this day and age,” says Donald. After graduating from U of W in 2020, Donald submitted two plays written during a university playwriting course to the National Theatre School. The application required two submissions over 20 pages. “I’d only written two,” she says. But she sent them in, and after three individual interviews and one group interview, Donald was accepted. “I got in, which was very surprising. I wasn’t expecting it, but when the NTS asks you if you want to study with them, you go,” says the graduate of the Transcona Collegiate Insti- tute. “So I became a playwright and moved to Montreal.” In two weeks, Donald returns for her third year of study in the playwright’s unit with two productions on the docket. One is a show for young audiences loosely based on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; the other will be a fully produced show as part of the theatre school’s New Words Festival. ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com Stomp crashing into ’Peg for 3 shows THE percussive musical Stomp is crashing into Winnipeg in April for a three-performance run at the Centennial Concert Hall. After debuting at the 1991 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Stomp evolved to become a hugely successful institution thanks to its orchestra of garbage cans, hubcaps and Zippo lighters. In January 2023, a New York production closed after over 11,000 performances. The Winnipeg shows (April 17-19) are part of a North American tour produced by Broadway Across Canada. Group tickets for 10 or more patrons are available now at centennialconcerthall.com for $46 to $124 each, with single tickets available in November. ;