Alice Munro's biography excluded husband's abuse of her daughter. How did that happen?

WARNING: This article contains details of abuse and may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.

When late author Alice Munro's daughter came forward about the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather, the revelation stunned Canadians and the literary world. 

But the fact that Munro's biographer, Robert Thacker, also knew about the abuse of Andrea Skinner and didn't include it has raised some thorny questions for biographers: what do they have a duty to include, and should they prioritize the concerns of their subject, their subject's fans or the historical record. 

"Robert Thacker had the story. He knew the story, and he acted in a very conventional and very traditional and —  I'm sorry to say — a very Canadian way," Ira Nadel, a biographer and professor emeritus of English at the University of British Columbia, told CBC in an interview.

Skinner was nine when her stepfather, the late author's second husband, Gerald Fremlin, first sexually assaulted her. 

Decades later, in March 2005, Fremlin pleaded guilty to indecent assault in a court case that, up until Wednesday, was subject to a publication ban. That ban prevented Skinner from being publicly identified. 

In stories published earlier this month by the Toronto Star, it was revealed that Munro turned her back on her daughter when Skinner informed her about the abuse. The author stayed with Fremlin until his death in 2013.  

The stories also revealed Skinner's desire to never "see another interview, biography or event that didn't wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me." 

But the abuse was never mentioned in Thacker's biography, Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, which was published in November 2005, eight months after Fremlin's guilty plea.

Thacker, who declined to speak to CBC for this article, told the Globe and Mail that he was aware of Skinner's assault and her subsequent estrangement from her mother but intentionally kept it out of his biography of Munro.

In interviews with the New York Times and the Washington Post, Thacker said he didn't include Skinner's experience because his book was already heading to print in 2005 when she contacted him, and he wasn't writing a "tell-all biography."

Thacker also chose to keep it out of the book's 2011 update — even after Munro herself sat down with him, asked him to turn off the tape recorder and spoke to him about what happened. He said he viewed the situation "as a private family matter."

Skinner says she was disappointed by Thacker's decision not to include the story of her sexual assault at the hands of her stepfather. 

Although the publication ban precluded publishing any evidence that would identify the victim, Skinner still wanted that information included in any writing about her mother. She believed only her name had to be kept out of print, she told CBC.