Months after sharing her harrowing story in a private essay, Lexi Ioannou is opening up much more in regards to the trauma she confronted by the hands of her stepfather, Tommy Manzo, the previous husband of her mom, The Actual Housewives of New Jersey star Dina Cantin (previously Dina Manzo).
Ioannou appeared on a brand new episode of fellow RHONJ legacy Gia Giudice’s podcast, Informal Chaos With Gia Giudice, which dropped on Monday (Might 26). She spoke in regards to the horrors she witnessed and skilled due to her former stepfather, who was sentenced to jail for hiring a mafia enforcer to assault Dina’s subsequent husband, Dave Cantin. Ioannou additionally revealed a significant replace about the place issues stand between her mom and aunt Caroline Manzo, whose relationship dissolved after she spoke out on behalf of Tommy in court docket.
Giudice introduced up the topic of Ioannou’s essay, during which she described the “psychological warfare” that commenced when her mom separated from Manzo. Giudice stated that the writing made her cry, “I bear in mind our mothers on the telephone simply saying, ‘My closet’s there… All the things’s there. He actually left me with nothing,’ and studying your entry and saying the way you even had half-hour to get your issues. That was not proper to you. This wasn’t your fault that they had been separating. It was virtually like a dominance factor, like, ‘Get out of my home,’ however you’re left with nothing to make you’re feeling so alone and helpless in a means, yeah?”
In response, Ioannou agreed and elaborated, “Then he held on to my issues for 10 years and used them as [collateral].” She added that she felt he had a “bizarre obsession” together with her and stored her room the identical because it was when she and her mom left. “He thought I used to be going to come back again,” she defined. “I can’t even start to grasp why you’d assume I might ever come again there.”
Giudice pressed on that remark to ask whether or not he was ever inappropriate together with her, and Ioannou denied as a lot. She stated, “He was by no means inappropriate, however he undoubtedly was very affectionate, and that was one thing I used to be very uncomfortable with as a result of neither of my dad and mom are that means. So to obtain it from a stepfather is type of like further unusual.” She went on to explain him as being “lovey dovey, kissy, huggy” and stated it made her “uncomfortable.” (She additionally surmised that he was like that as a result of he didn’t have kids of his personal and thus handled her like his personal.)
Afterward within the interview, she described the continued fallout from Caroline’s determination to talk in favor of Tommy, regardless of all the pieces he’d put Dina and her subsequent husband by, together with an alleged dwelling invasion in 2017.
Ioannou remembered reaching out to Caroline’s children, her cousins, for assist getting her issues again from Tommy’s home after he was despatched to jail for seven years.
“There’s simply layers to the ache. I didn’t even wish to get into the betrayal that I had handled from them. I simply stated, ‘This can be a means for us to restore what’s so damaged. For those who can present me that you just love me and assist me with one thing that’s breaking me, that I do know you could assist me with, then we are able to restore one thing,’” Ioannou remembered. “I don’t assume my mother, her sister, can ever restore what’s damaged. It’s too far gone. However why can’t the cousins? I might like to know them and know their kids and be of their lives.”
Nevertheless, once they didn’t assist her, she gave up. “It pains me, however the actuality is from my eyes, they failed me they usually failed me once more,” she stated. “I used to be on my knees begging for assist. Actually, I’m in California, I want any person that may go to that door, knock on the door, name the fitting individual, ask for assist. I do know the issues are there and we’re ticking time bomb till they’re not as a result of now he’s in jail, different persons are answerable for what’s happening in that home. And I used to be proper. Weeks glided by, weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks, no, nothing of significance was achieved… I simply stopped listening to from them. It’s like they only didn’t even care.”
Ioannou stated she was particularly disillusioned that her relationship with Lauren Manzo is damaged. “I used to be speaking to them daily, for hours a day, and I had some actually superior conversations with my cousin,” she revealed. “And I like her. I actually do. She’s the closest factor I’ll ever have on this lifetime to a sister, and I feel it kills each of us that we don’t have one another anymore, but it surely simply can’t … There’s an excessive amount of ache. Now I’m even in additional ache.”
Tommy was sentenced to 84 months in jail by a Newark federal court docket, with three years of subsequent supervised launch, after he was convicted of 1 rely of committing a violent crime in assist of racketeering, one rely of conspiracy to commit a violent crime in assist of racketeering, and one rely of falsifying and concealing paperwork associated to a federal investigation. He’d been accused of hiring a member of the Lucchese Crime Household to assault Dave Cantin, who was then Dina’s boyfriend, in 2015. He paid for the hit by gifting the enforcer with a free wedding ceremony reception at his catering corridor. At his court docket listening to, Caroline appeared as a personality witness for her brother-in-law, who she was associated to by her marriage to his brother Albert Manzo, in addition to her sister Dina’s marriage to him.
For those who or somebody you realize is the sufferer of home abuse, contact the Nationwide Home Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.