Months after sharing her harrowing story in a personal essay, Lexi Ioannou is opening up even more about the trauma she faced at the hands of her stepfather, Tommy Manzo, the former husband of her mother, The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Dina Cantin (formerly Dina Manzo).
Ioannou appeared on a new episode of fellow RHONJ legacy Gia Giudice’s podcast, Casual Chaos With Gia Giudice, which dropped on Monday (May 26). She spoke about the horrors she witnessed and experienced because of her former stepfather, who was sentenced to prison for hiring a mafia enforcer to attack Dina’s next husband, Dave Cantin. Ioannou also revealed a major update about where things stand between her mother and aunt Caroline Manzo, whose relationship dissolved after she spoke out on behalf of Tommy in court.
Giudice brought up the subject of Ioannou’s essay, in which she described the “psychological warfare” that commenced when her mother separated from Manzo. Giudice said that the writing made her cry, “I remember our moms on the phone just saying, ‘My closet’s there… Everything’s there. He literally left me with nothing,’ and reading your entry and saying how you even had 30 minutes to get your things. That was not right to you. This wasn’t your fault that they were separating. It was almost like a dominance thing, like, ‘Get out of my house,’ but you’re left with nothing to make you feel so alone and helpless in a way, yeah?”
In response, Ioannou agreed and elaborated, “Then he held on to my things for 10 years and used them as [collateral].” She added that she felt he had a “weird obsession” with her and kept her room the same as it was when she and her mother left. “He thought I was going to come back,” she explained. “I can’t even begin to understand why you would think I would ever come back there.”
Giudice pressed on that comment to ask whether he was ever inappropriate with her, and Ioannou denied as much. She said, “He was never inappropriate, but he definitely was very affectionate, and that was something I was very uncomfortable with because neither of my parents are that way. So to receive it from a stepfather is kind of like extra strange.” She went on to describe him as being “lovey dovey, kissy, huggy” and said it made her “uncomfortable.” (She also surmised that he was like that because he didn’t have children of his own and thus treated her like his own.)
Later on in the interview, she described the continued fallout from Caroline’s decision to speak in favor of Tommy, despite everything he’d put Dina and her subsequent husband through, including an alleged home invasion in 2017.
Ioannou remembered reaching out to Caroline’s kids, her cousins, for help getting her things back from Tommy’s house after he was sent to prison for seven years.
“There’s just layers to the pain. I didn’t even want to get into the betrayal that I had dealt with from them. I just said, ‘This is a way for us to repair what’s so broken. If you can show me that you love me and help me with something that’s breaking me, that I know that you can help me with, then we can repair something,’” Ioannou remembered. “I don’t think my mom, her sister, can ever repair what’s broken. It’s too far gone. But why can’t the cousins? I would love to know them and know their children and be in their lives.”
However, when they didn’t help her, she gave up. “It pains me, but the reality is from my eyes, they failed me and they failed me again,” she said. “I was on my knees begging for help. Literally, I’m in California, I need somebody that can go to that door, knock on the door, call the right person, ask for help. I know the things are there and we’re ticking time bomb until they’re not because now he’s in prison, other people are in charge of what’s going on in that house. And I was right. Weeks went by, weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks, no, nothing of importance was done… I just stopped hearing from them. It’s like they just didn’t even care.”
Ioannou said she was especially disappointed that her relationship with Lauren Manzo is broken. “I was talking to them every day, for hours a day, and I had some really awesome conversations with my cousin,” she revealed. “And I love her. I really do. She’s the closest thing I’ll ever have in this lifetime to a sister, and I think it kills both of us that we don’t have each other anymore, but it just can’t … There’s too much pain. Now I’m even in more pain.”
Tommy was sentenced to 84 months in prison by a Newark federal court, with three years of subsequent supervised release, after he was convicted of one count of committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering, one count of conspiracy to commit a violent crime in aid of racketeering, and one count of falsifying and concealing documents related to a federal investigation. He’d been accused of hiring a member of the Lucchese Crime Family 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 reception at his catering hall. At his court hearing, Caroline appeared as a character witness for her brother-in-law, who she was related to by her marriage to his brother Albert Manzo, as well as her sister Dina’s marriage to him.
If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
