Jan. 30, 2024
Standing for Justice: Michelle Horton on Nicole Addimando, Family, and Domestic Violence Reform I Ep. 31
How can families navigate the aftermath of domestic violence while advocating for justice? In this powerful episode of the 1 in 3 Podcast, Ingrid is joined by Michelle Horton, sister of Nicole Addimando, author of DEAR SISTER: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds. Michelle shares her journey of adopting her niece and nephew, supporting Nicole’s cause, and confronting systemic failures that leave survivors vulnerable. We explore: The subtle and overt signs of domestic abu...
How can families navigate the aftermath of domestic violence while advocating for justice?
In this powerful episode of the 1 in 3 Podcast, Ingrid is joined by Michelle Horton, sister of Nicole Addimando, author of DEAR SISTER: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds. Michelle shares her journey of adopting her niece and nephew, supporting Nicole’s cause, and confronting systemic failures that leave survivors vulnerable.
We explore:
- The subtle and overt signs of domestic abuse within families
- How silence, shame, and victim-blaming hinder survivors
- The emotional journey of supporting a loved one through trauma
- The implications of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA)
- Advocacy, defense committees, and building supportive networks
Through intimate personal stories and reflections, this episode underscores the courage it takes to stand for survivors, advocate for systemic change, and cultivate resilience in the face of injustice.
🎧 Key Takeaways:
- Recognizing hidden signs of domestic abuse
- Supporting family members affected by violence
- Understanding the justice system’s challenges for survivors
- The critical role of advocacy and community support
- Lessons in resilience, courage, and solidarity
https://andsoistayedfilm.com/
Michelle’s bio: https://www.1in3podcast.com/guests/michelle-horton/
"DEAR SISTER: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds" by Michelle Horton
1 in 3 is intended for mature audiences. Episodes contain explicit content and may be triggering to some.
If you are in the United States and need help right now, call the national domestic violence hotline at 800-799-7233 or text the word “start” to 88788.
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Thank you for listening!
Cover art by Laura Swift Dahlke
Music by Tim Crowe
00:00 - Memoir of Domestic Violence and Survival
08:34 - Family Reactions to Domestic Violence
14:02 - Legal Protection Against Domestic Violence
24:25 - The Impact of Domestic Violence Law
29:54 - Gender-Based Violence and the Justice System
WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors, welcome to 1 in 3.
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I'm your host, ingrid.
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In episode 19, I chronicled the domestic violence story surrounding Nicole Atamondo.
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Please revisit and familiarize yourself with it, as today I am honored to share a discussion I had with her sister, michelle Horton.
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Michelle wrote a compelling memoir recounting the drama surrounding herself and her family as they navigated through learning of Nikki's abuse, her arrest and sentencing.
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The book is titled Dear Sister, a Memoir of Secrets, survival and Unbreakable Bonds and was just released January 30th 2024.
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Here is Michelle, incredible research and you hit all of the points that a lot of people don't hit.
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So I thought, if I was going to talk to anyone, I would be happy to talk to you, because I trust the story in your hands.
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So my story is that six years ago, last September, I got a knock on the door and it was a police officer saying that my niece and nephew, who were two and four at the time, were sitting at a police station and my sister, nikki, was there, and that's all that they could tell me.
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And from that point over, life kind of flipped on its head and over the next few hours reality unraveled and I learned that my sister, who was a preschool teacher and a stay-at-home mom and a person I trusted more than anyone on the planet, had shot her partner, someone who I had known for nine years, who was part of our family, who I did not see as being violent or unsafe and I had no context for why or even how at first.
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And I learned quite quickly that she had been involved in a domestic violence situation far beyond anything I could have ever comprehended or anticipated.
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And I was brought into a circle of women who had been trying to help her escape.
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For years I learned things about my sister, who was the closest person to me, in proximity my entire life.
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She's two years younger than me.
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I thought I knew everything about her and I was sitting in rooms with people who knew details that I never could have fathomed.
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I learned just how much I wasn't seeing right in front of me and I had to make a decision whether I was going to believe her and believe this situation and take in my niece and nephew, or I guess I wasn't.
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I mean, there wasn't even really a choice that.
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That's just the reality that was presented to me and I said yes.
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And from that point on, me and a group of women, we started as a very small group and we've grown large over the years and we have never stopped fighting for people to see the injustice of what had happened to my sister before she had to pull a trigger to save her own life and then how the court system responded.
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And so I have been raising her two children through all of this and battling the criminal justice system, enduring a very high profile local murder trial, walking through a verdict that was not what any of us ever saw happening and just riding the ups and downs along the way, like a lot of downs, and doing it with an incredible group of women who've become sisters to me and that was six years ago.
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We've been through a lot and I wrote about the whole story before all of this happened.
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I was a writer and I kind of always knew that this was a story that needed to be told, and not what happened to my sister, but what happened to me and our family as a result of how the criminal justice system criminalized her for her act of survival.
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And I think that's one of the biggest hurdles with domestic violence victims when asked why did you stay in this relationship, there's a feeling of hopelessness because they hear of different situations of where the justice system failed, and I think there is another episode that I did one or two weeks after your sister's, where the actual perpetrator had a lower sentence than what Nikki was initially served with.
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You mentioned in your author's note at the beginning of the book the reasons behind wanting to write the book.
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What would you like for listeners to this podcast to take away from your story?
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Well, I think, first of all, I would love more people to understand the issue of criminalized survival, because before this happened to our family, when it first happened, I assumed it was just an anomaly, that this was just a crazy thing that happened to us and to Nikki, and I didn't understand that this is what happens to domestic violence victims who fight back, that there's a very real reason that victims don't believe that the system is going to keep them safe because, like you said, perpetrators typically do not have very long prison sentences and prisons are not a breeding ground to create more safe people like those.
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People then come out and are unsafe again and victims are not wrong to not trust the system, as evidenced by how they ended up treating Nikki by not believing her.
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So that this is some this.
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Our women's prisons are filled with women who are victims of gender-based violence in all forms, whether they are like Nikki.
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They had to make a split second survival instinct decisions not even a decision, it's just an instinct to protect your life and the other person ends up injured or killed.
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It happens I mean domestic violence.
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Homicides happen every single day.
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Three women are killed every single day in this country and, by sheer luck.
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Sometimes women are able to survive and when they do, they're put in the prison system.
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I really want readers to understand that, because you know we are all taxpayers and we are all feeding into a system that feeds into the prison system, and we should know.
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We should know the truth about our women's prisons and the truth about domestic violence, and to pay attention to what's happening in our communities and pay attention to local elections, because it's the judges and the district attorneys that have all of the power in changing the situation.
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And I also would love readers to walk away with a sense that we as a community can also do a lot to support people and there's a lot of hope and light in the form of people who step in in these situations of injustice, and that there's a lot of good that can be done even in such a dark situation, and we have the power to survive and to be resilient in the face of unfathomable horror.
00:08:13.630 --> 00:08:18.523
And I think that's a good point too that you mentioned a little bit earlier is victims of domestic violence.
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There's a very thin line of the result of either getting out safely and surviving or having to take the steps that your sister did, and again, not a choice but an instinct.
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It's survive or not survive.
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Another point that I thought was important is how even family members may not be privy to what's happening in a victim's life, and I know, I have a personal experience where my family had no idea what was going on, and that's it's not a direct result of not trusting in family.
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It's kind of an embarrassment or feeling ashamed of what's happening.
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How did, how do you think your family handled that situation?
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I think prior to you know at all, coming out very dramatically and undeniably when it was able to be hidden.
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I think we reacted the way that most families do.
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I think, first of all, it's really hard to see something when you're too close up to it.
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It's hard to imagine that someone you know and love could really be hurting in the way that they are.
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It's like some kind of self protective mechanism.
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I mean, I don't pretend to know the whole psychology behind it, but it's very real and it happens to not just some families, it happens to most families when it there comes to domestic violence.
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Domestic violence also happens to typically be generational.
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So we have our own blind spots and our own wounds that prevent us from seeing things from a full picture, because we might be projecting, we might be in denial about certain aspects of your own life.
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So I think it's I think it's really normal to not see what's right in front of you and you know I can't speak for Nikki, but I can say what she told me when the two of us would sit and kind of unravel this, how didn't I see this?
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Why didn't I tell you kind of conundrum that we were faced with Is like you said, there's a lot of shame and embarrassment, especially when it's sexual violence.
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That's not something you want to talk about with your parents or you know your family.
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It's something that when there is sexual abuse especially if it's rooted in childhood, as it was with her that shame is really embedded in your entire worldview.
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So I could not fault her for wanting to keep that hidden.
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There's also the fact that there's someone in your life telling you no one will believe you and there is a culture and a system that reinforces that at every turn.
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So it's not unreasonable to think that your family won't believe you.
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What she told me was you know, if I said it out loud and I told you the people that I care about the most in my life, then it becomes real.
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There's almost this ability to kind of sort of like deny I don't know what the right word is for it but to just like believe that it could go away, or believe maybe it's not as bad as I'm thinking.
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It is, to kind of minimize it in her own head.
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But if she said it out loud to me or to her you know our parents then it's real and something is going to need to be done about it.
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I think that's a very common belief because I've, through the stories that I've read and researched and talked to with others, it's almost like when you say it out loud you actually become the victim.
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You don't want to believe that you are an actual victim of domestic violence, but once it's said out loud and the people closest to you, especially family members, know about it, then it then all of a sudden you are a victim and you're sitting in a situation where you were trying to not be in, Either believe that you weren't in or try to find a way to solve the problem.
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I think a lot of other, a lot of victims also feel that the reason they're being victimized is because of something that they did, or if they changed their behavior they would be able to change the abuse.
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Did Nikki ever mention anything like that to you?
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Yeah, I mean, that was really what she struggled with.
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From what I understand, talking to her former therapist, talking to her confidants at the time, was that this is something that kept happening to her since she was little and so, which is very common it's incredibly statistically common to, when you're a victim of violence, to intimate partner or childhood abuse to be re victimized.
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That's just like a statistical fact, but it's something that's hard for people to comprehend, and I know it was hard for her because she would say well, this, this has happened to me more than once and the common denominator is me, so I must be the one who's causing this to happen, and we live in a culture that victim blames, so you know that is reinforced everywhere you look that that she must be doing something to cause this.
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So, speaking of victim blaming, I think that's another reason why victims of domestic violence don't come forward and don't press charges is because they are slut shamed or they are questioned on what did you do to cause this violence onto yourself, or why have you even stayed in this situation for as long as you have?
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Yes, I completely agree.
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And typically if a victim is going to come out and say this person, it has been abusing me, what that person will do is say no, this was consensual.
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Like no, I didn't.
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Like.
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I mean every, every the spectrum of domestic violence is very wide.
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So you know, if you've read the book, you know what happened to Nikki is very extreme and very specific.
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So it wasn't unreasonable for her to think.
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Everyone would think it was consensual because of it was a sexual nature and we want to believe that women are sluts.
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We want to believe I don't, I mean, that's just like part of our societal view.
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So when he's saying to her I'm going to say it's consensual, I'm going to say, actually, this is your doing, she was.
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I mean, that's humiliating to have to put that out there and to have to risk that.
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But then in her case he wasn't here anymore and that still was what happened.
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It was just the state was speaking for him.
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Another aspect is legitimate fear.
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So if a victim were to file for a restraining order and actually get a restraining order which is difficult in and of itself, but what does that piece of paper even do for the victim?
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How does that stop the perpetrator from actually escalating?
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Because now there's, you know, a file on them and on their behavior.
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They always say, statistically, the worst or the scariest part of a victim's situation is when they make it known that they're trying to leave.
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Yeah, that's when most women are killed is when they're attempting to leave or after they have just left.
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And that was the case with Nikki was that she was trying to leave and as she was trying to leave, the violence was escalating to severely homicidal levels.
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But you know, I so I had just ended a marriage about a year before my sister's arrest and I did it with the help of a domestic violence agency and I got a restraining order and the courts kind of used that.
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They didn't kind of they absolutely use that in court to say, well, your sister was able to do this and you helped her, you told her to get a restraining order, but then, like you didn't do that, so clearly that means you're not a real victim.
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Like that was kind of like, well, your sister even your sister got a restraining order.
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I had financial abuse, I had emotion, like it was not.
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I never once feared that me going and getting a restraining order was going to impact my physical safety.
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It's a very different situation to someone who has threatened and had proven to be very physically violent and has a weapon and has used that weapon on you before, and it's a completely different situation the fear level of if I take this step and get a restraining order, I'm actually at risk of dying.
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And there's another story of a local woman this was, I think, a couple of years ago where a woman left her abuser.
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She got a restraining order.
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She did everything she was supposed to do.
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The restraining order was violated multiple times.
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So the guy is in prison in our local jail the same jail that held Nikki, and he was seen before a judge the same judge that sentenced Nikki.
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And that judge let him out on electronic monitoring.
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He took off his electronic monitoring the same kind of ankle bracelet that held Nikki when she was out on bail, took off the ankle monitor, went to this woman's adult daughter's house and murdered her in front of the woman's grandchild and took the most precious thing he could from his victim, his, her daughter.
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And she can't get her daughter back.
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And now the guy is in prison for the rest of his life and they call that justice.
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But there were so many times where that piece of paper did absolutely nothing to protect her, took her daughter and her daughter actually tried to get a restraining order against this guy and they denied her.
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And so the mother, this grieving mother now, who has had this horrific experience with domestic violence and her daughter being taken and she's raising her grandson is trying to fight for a law that family members can get restraining orders, and it's like how is that not even?
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How is that not a thing already that we should be granting protection to family members of victims when we know abusers will attack anyone to get at the victim?
00:19:09.295 --> 00:19:22.355
So yeah, so all in all, restraining orders are not foolproof in helping anything and often does escalate things, and I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.
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I think also in terms of escalation.
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It brings up another point of how people who are not familiar with the world of domestic violence often wonder how victims end up in that situation.
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And they'll even say if that were me, I never would have put up with that, I would have been long gone.
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But domestic violence doesn't start with the level of severity that Niki suffered from Chris.
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It starts off a lot more can't say gentle, but at lower levels, maybe psychological or emotional abuse that ends up escalating into the degree of where it can lead to even to murder.
00:20:07.212 --> 00:20:31.194
Yeah, I think that escalation is incredibly important for people to understand because when it gets to a certain level sometimes when it gets to a homicidal level the system is not doing a really adequate job at all at figuring out how to prevent someone who has the power and control in a situation from taking somebody's life.
00:20:31.194 --> 00:20:53.958
When it gets to that level, like it starts in one place and it escalates always every single time, and where it escalates to might vary and where it's interrupted can vary, but when you're trying to get out of it at step like 16, you're in a much more dangerous place than if you were trying to get out of it in step one.
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So we just look at a situation and you're like, well, I wouldn't have allowed it to get to that level, but you don't understand how slowly it creeps in and all of the other factors, like children.
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I didn't know.
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I mean so much about domestic violence.
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I learned through people explaining to me my sister's story, like sitting in rooms and then me asking questions, like understanding how there was such a clear escalation with each birth of their children and one particularly sharp increase during a pregnancy, and to me I thought that was like wouldn't they be nice during a pregnancy, like you're carrying the child and I didn't know that statistically that is a factor of escalation typically is during pregnancy, as, like, I don't understand the psychology of that, but it is just truth that pregnancy can cause the abuser to escalate and also keeps the victim more trapped because they have children to take care of and sometimes they don't have the financial means to take care of those children without the abuser.
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It's just a really complicated situation and it's just another thing that people need to understand.
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Like the leading cause of death in pregnant women is homicide.
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That's just a fact.
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That was one fact that I had read and that took me by surprise too.
00:22:26.269 --> 00:22:47.329
I actually I have learned a lot of about domestic violence over this past year of doing this podcast, but that was one statistic that I didn't realize either is how the amount of domestic violence increases with pregnancy, and that completely baffled my mind that the leading cause of death in pregnant women is homicide.
00:22:47.329 --> 00:22:58.702
Speaking of laws, the domestic violence survivors justice act that had just been passed I know it coincided with was it Nikki's sentencing?
00:22:59.585 --> 00:23:00.247
Her verdict.
00:23:00.247 --> 00:23:46.347
Her verdict, yeah, and it was like it was such a factor in the entire decision Her decision to go to trial was because we knew we had been told listen, like there's this law that's about to be passed probably it took 10 years for this to get passed which is a law that basically says if a victim of domestic violence commits a crime, then their sentence should be mitigated by the fact that they were a victim, like the judge should take into consideration that they were a victim and sentence them accordingly, not saying like victims of domestic violence should not be incarcerated, which they shouldn't be, but it was just.
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We should consider which again is just kind of insane that it's not already a law, but it took 10 years to get this to be passed.
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It had passed, I think, in the assembly I may have passed in the Senate and we were waiting for at the time it was Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York to sign it into law, but we had no idea when it was gonna happen, and so she ended up going to trial, did not go the way she wanted it to, and then, I think maybe two weeks later, it was signed into law and we kind of all felt like, oh my gosh, this was made for Nikki, like this is gonna be the thing that's gonna help her.
00:24:25.525 --> 00:24:38.092
So she had to go through an entire mini trial, like a three day trial, again to prove if she was a victim of domestic violence, which is another question entirely of how much proof do you need?
00:24:38.092 --> 00:24:43.855
What does the court need to prove that someone is a victim of domestic violence?
00:24:43.855 --> 00:24:47.815
It seems as though the standard of proof is unreachably high.
00:24:47.815 --> 00:24:57.834
Nikki had all of this evidence, all of these witnesses and at the end of it all the judge decided he did not believe she was a victim of domestic violence.
00:24:57.834 --> 00:25:18.015
So the law didn't work initially and we all kind of went into a panic, because how the law works is how one judge decides a law is then cited by other judges in other cases.
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So if judge McLaughlin's ruling of Nikki that she wasn't a victim, then that could affect how other victims are sentenced and seen under this law.
00:25:30.769 --> 00:25:49.112
So we really used that to fight in her appeal and when her appeal was seen by higher court judges, they decided that she was a victim of domestic violence and did resentance her under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.
00:25:49.865 --> 00:25:54.529
So if that law had never existed and it's a pretty.
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It's not a law that a lot of states have More states are beginning to have laws like this but it was a pretty progressive law for New York to have.
00:26:04.674 --> 00:26:16.873
If that law didn't exist which if it had been just a few years prior it wouldn't have then she would have 19 years to life sentence right now, but instead she was sentenced to seven and a half years.
00:26:16.873 --> 00:26:23.446
So the law it was a long road to get the law to work for her and we were pretty.
00:26:23.446 --> 00:26:58.431
We felt like I mean I felt guilty that advocates had been fighting for this law for 10 years and then, in the soup of one judge's decision, it could have made the entire law just like worthless, but thankfully it did work and because it worked from a higher court I forget the number, but one of the lawyers who works on these DVSJA cases, I mean it's dozens and dozens of women who have been released or will be released because of this law.
00:26:58.431 --> 00:27:01.473
So it's quite literally saving people's lives.
00:27:03.415 --> 00:27:09.704
Okay, I was just about to ask if you were aware of how well this has worked since your sister's case.
00:27:09.704 --> 00:27:11.442
Her case was the first one to be considered.
00:27:11.442 --> 00:27:13.721
Is that correct, or one of the first?
00:27:13.721 --> 00:27:14.265
Yeah, one of the first.
00:27:15.653 --> 00:27:17.704
It was one of the first when it had first gotten signed into law.
00:27:17.704 --> 00:27:23.684
But then there were like a couple of other cases that were decided one way or the other.
00:27:23.684 --> 00:27:27.805
I think the first, like funny enough, the first one that actually worked was a man.
00:27:27.805 --> 00:27:28.755
The victim was a man.
00:27:28.755 --> 00:27:36.984
It's like, of course Now I mean it's almost like every day not every day, but a lot I hear from Nikki saying like oh so, and so got her DVSJA.
00:27:36.984 --> 00:27:58.744
She's packing up and leaving and Nikki had a friend named Liz at Bedford who another horrific story of survival and she had spent years kind of languishing in the appeal process because there's not a lot of attorneys who are well-versed in this and the attorneys that are cost a lot of money.
00:27:58.744 --> 00:28:08.194
So that's another issue that there are a lot of women who are in prison who need to have someone fighting for them for the DVSJA.
00:28:08.194 --> 00:28:12.744
It's a whole process to go through the appeals process.
00:28:12.744 --> 00:28:26.184
But Liz reached out to me the other day and said I got my DVSJA, I'm going home and it's just such a good feeling that it's working and I'm still very close with the woman.
00:28:26.184 --> 00:28:27.744
Her name is Kim Dadu.
00:28:27.744 --> 00:28:28.227
She, she was.
00:28:28.248 --> 00:28:34.744
I don't know if there's a documentary that Nikki was in called and so I Stayed.
00:28:34.744 --> 00:29:00.143
And it's about Nikki, and it's about this woman, kim, and another woman named Tanisha, and Kim started this law and has been fighting for it tirelessly, and it's just so heartening to see her work playing out, because she served, I think, like 17 and a half years 17 years for killing her abuser and she was like I don't want another woman to go through what I did.
00:29:00.143 --> 00:29:08.119
So you know, it's remarkable to be connected to all of these people who are fighting for the right thing.
00:29:10.077 --> 00:29:43.875
I think one thing throughout your book and watching that documentary and seeing the character of you and Nikki and your family is it's really amazing because as frustrating as her entire, all of it, all of it, all of it, from Chris all the way through to currently the result and everything the fact that you guys are still advocating for other victims and happy for those who this law has worked for and their sentences have been shortened appropriately.
00:29:43.875 --> 00:29:53.535
I think it's amazing to see the excitement that is working for them still while Nikki is still serving out her sentence.
00:29:54.585 --> 00:30:02.310
Yeah, well, thank you, and there's also a sense that one singular day spent in prison is too much.
00:30:02.310 --> 00:30:52.237
So there are moments where we're celebrating that a woman is getting out after 22 years and it is wonderful because she's not there for the rest of her life, but that's 22 years that she's been locked away, and so it's kind of like both it's excitement and it's also just like grief that there's still so much life being lost to this very clear injustice that women it's typically women, it could be anyone, any gender of people who are facing gender-based violence that are are subjected to the abuse of the criminal justice system after surviving what they survived in their own house.
00:30:52.237 --> 00:30:57.212
It's just, it's wrong on so many levels.
00:30:59.184 --> 00:31:04.154
Agreed, and it doesn't just affect that person, that individual.
00:31:04.154 --> 00:31:16.053
There are families and small children where the timeline that you would give of you know it's been 18 months, so that's such a huge in any lifespan that's a huge amount of time.
00:31:16.053 --> 00:31:24.425
But then when you're also talking about small children who are missing their mother, that's that's incredibly devastating.
00:31:25.086 --> 00:32:02.712
Yeah, and that is one other thing that I would really hope people would take away from the book is to see firsthand the effect that it has on children and people, because you know people love their true crime stories and they love reading the news and and they kind of think it's like one person versus another person and it's just the people who are in the defendancy or standing next to the prosecutor, but there's an entire network of people who are affected, most significantly children and the experience of having a parent who is incarcerated, especially someone you're incredibly bonded to.
00:32:03.095 --> 00:32:16.613
Your mother is someone that you know to be good, like the cognitive dissonance of this is my mom and I need her and she's good, she's the best person I know in the world, but the world is telling me that she's bad.
00:32:16.613 --> 00:32:27.444
I mean, that's just really psychologically very difficult and the emotional toll that it takes on children and families parents, siblings.
00:32:27.444 --> 00:32:47.259
I really wanted to convey that in a way that people could feel because hopefully it would have them looking at these stories differently that it's not just you know, one person and another person, it's its entire family systems and what that does to generations of people.
00:32:49.606 --> 00:32:52.505
Yes, and I think also by you telling your story.
00:32:52.505 --> 00:32:56.535
I think that's going to be so incredibly helpful because Nikki had a.
00:32:56.535 --> 00:32:59.488
You had a very good support system.
00:32:59.488 --> 00:33:06.933
You learned that as you got, you were introduced to all these other women who were supportive in her life throughout the years.
00:33:06.933 --> 00:33:28.531
And then Kim all of Kim's work getting in this law past there's been an incredible amount of support and you being as dedicated as you were to learn the legal system and learn all about domestic violence in order to help your sister is incredible, and the fact is there's a lot of victims out there that don't have that support system.
00:33:28.531 --> 00:33:34.371
But I think by hearing these kind of stories they may be able to kind of fall back on.
00:33:34.371 --> 00:33:41.045
I'm not the only person going through this, and if this person can get through, then I can get through as well.
00:33:42.788 --> 00:33:47.902
Yeah, I hope so and I hope that they understand that we need each other in this, that there are.
00:33:47.902 --> 00:33:52.398
There are organizations that will put together defense committees, if possible.
00:33:52.398 --> 00:33:56.794
You know, I mean the places where defense committees are successful.
00:33:56.794 --> 00:34:03.724
Like we live 90, 90 miles from New York City, like we're close to resources, we're close to large pockets of people.
00:34:03.724 --> 00:34:11.282
California, like we, our defense committee will sometimes like zoom with other defense committees.
00:34:11.282 --> 00:34:15.833
Sometimes defense committees they don't even know the person.
00:34:15.833 --> 00:34:19.845
They're just people who want to do the right thing and they're passionate about this and they want to help.
00:34:19.845 --> 00:34:32.001
I think the defense committees that are the most successful do have ties to the person, but anyone can do this work and we can do it together and we can work together.
00:34:32.021 --> 00:34:42.197
But there are some pockets of the country that they don't even have attorneys that are in the state that specialize in this, that even understand this.
00:34:42.297 --> 00:34:45.844
I mean the fact that we were near so many resources.
00:34:48.391 --> 00:34:51.740
That's not because we were deserving of it or Nikki was deserving of it.
00:34:51.780 --> 00:35:25.882
It was just, quite literally, where we live and there are just a lot of people don't have that privilege, based on all sorts of reasons, and that's one thing that's been like a little hard for people to to like process that Nikki, in a lot of ways, was like a best case scenario as far as the people who were around her, the lawyer that we ended up finding in the end, the resources that were given like the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell is a New York City based firm that came in for the appeal and gave like millions of dollars of pro bono work.
00:35:29.148 --> 00:35:30.572
That's like one in a million chance.
00:35:30.572 --> 00:35:43.945
You know, like that doesn't happen to a lot of people and we cannot continue to like just hope that someone's lucky enough to stumble into the right and to be able to do that.
00:35:43.945 --> 00:35:48.994
And I hope that someone is lucky enough to stumble into the right.
00:35:48.994 --> 00:35:51.277
You know resources.
00:35:51.277 --> 00:36:02.711
It's just you know, seven and a half years of her life is like a best case scenario for this issue of criminalized survival and like we have to do better than that.
00:36:05.047 --> 00:36:16.885
Agreed and I think that Any victims, survivors, whatever you want to call it the more they get involved, the more they tell their story, I think, the more that is going to be able to happen.
00:36:16.885 --> 00:36:22.981
So, seven and a half years from her sentencing what timeline does that put her as far as her release?
00:36:25.271 --> 00:36:29.010
Well, they don't like to give you specifics ever.
00:36:29.010 --> 00:36:32.454
The longest they can hold her is until summer.
00:36:32.454 --> 00:36:42.065
So July of 2024, which, when we first got the news of the appeal, was in 2021, which is kind of where the book ends.
00:36:42.065 --> 00:36:44.836
It felt like an eternity.
00:36:44.836 --> 00:36:52.980
It felt like, yes, it's I mean, incredible that she doesn't have a life sentence anymore, but we still have three more years of this.
00:36:52.980 --> 00:37:01.989
Like this is like it's a lot to have to move through, but we're kind of like here now we did move through it.
00:37:01.989 --> 00:37:04.010
We're on the precipice of 2024.
00:37:04.010 --> 00:37:25.784
So we're really like preparing for her to come home, Like our committee is like just yesterday, we're like creating wish lists and I'm closing on a house soon, and like we're like, really, we're really moving towards her actually coming home within the next few months.
00:37:26.170 --> 00:37:33.010
So, yeah, I think we won't know the specifics until right before, because they kind of like to keep you on your toes.
00:37:33.010 --> 00:37:37.681
They don't really like to give you any solid ground in any way.
00:37:37.681 --> 00:37:46.010
But yeah, we're like we're in the home stretch, which is really surreal, and it's like this is our last Christmas.
00:37:46.010 --> 00:37:51.442
This is our, you know, everything is the last which feels like we can get through this.
00:37:51.442 --> 00:37:52.824
You know it's it's.
00:37:52.824 --> 00:38:10.943
It's almost like we're kind of not enjoying, we're not, you know this last time but this little four person family that we've had, we've, you know, gone through so much together, the pandemic together, and it's like, okay, well, this dynamic is actually going to end in the best way.
00:38:10.943 --> 00:38:17.010
We're going to have mom with us now and I'm sure the transition is going to be like all transitions.
00:38:17.010 --> 00:38:27.010
It's going to be ups and downs but, like the fact that she will be out of a correctional facility, we don't have to go to a correctional facility anymore.
00:38:27.010 --> 00:38:31.018
I mean, it's like it's we're so excited.
00:38:33.550 --> 00:38:36.673
I imagine that it, like you said, three years, is in you.
00:38:36.673 --> 00:38:47.445
You broke down the, the number of days and the number of visits and that had to feel like forever away, but I can imagine the excitement of it's actually coming.
00:38:47.445 --> 00:38:50.434
So also your, your book.
00:38:50.434 --> 00:38:51.416
I want to talk about that a little bit.
00:38:51.416 --> 00:38:54.943
That's due to be released in January of 2024.
00:38:55.431 --> 00:38:56.454
Yes, January 30.
00:38:58.932 --> 00:39:02.764
Okay, and so are there any links or anything?
00:39:02.764 --> 00:39:04.909
Do you know where the book will be available for purchase?
00:39:05.309 --> 00:39:08.233
Yes, the book is available for preorder anywhere.
00:39:08.233 --> 00:39:29.949
Anywhere that you buy books Barnes, noble, amazon, target, but and your local bookstores my local bookstore, oblong Books it's in Rhineback, new York they are doing a preorder campaign for signed books, so if you order through Oblong, then you'll get a signed book.
00:39:30.851 --> 00:39:37.010
Okay, your story and everything that you guys have done is absolutely incredible and I don't want to take up too much more of your time.
00:39:37.010 --> 00:39:49.882
Is there anything else that you would like to, any parts that we didn't touch on that you wanted to mention, or is there any kind of last lasting remarks that you want people to sit with?
00:39:50.791 --> 00:40:04.010
I hope that if people read the book I hope you read the book, because having the experience witnessed is really powerful and so much of my experience through the court system has been a silencing.
00:40:04.010 --> 00:40:45.010
So to get certain things out there means a lot to me, just in my own personal healing, and I also think this is a story that illuminates something much larger in our society that often goes unnoticed, sometimes in our own lives, definitely in our communities, and we all have this power to sister each other through the darkest moments of each other's lives and it matters so much to show up for each other and to carry each other through these horrific experiences.
00:40:45.010 --> 00:40:54.840
And if there's anyone who is interested in learning more about criminalized survival, there's an organization called Survived and Punished.
00:40:54.840 --> 00:41:01.010
It's like the perfect name because that's exactly what happens, and they have chapters all over the country.
00:41:01.010 --> 00:41:11.778
They have a New York chapter that really guided us as a defense committee with even just language of what a defense committee does, how we can organize together.
00:41:12.190 --> 00:41:14.880
There's opportunities all over the country.
00:41:14.880 --> 00:41:19.681
There are survivors in prison all over the country that need support.
00:41:19.681 --> 00:41:21.596
They need people showing up for them.
00:41:21.596 --> 00:41:30.989
They need people sharing things on social media, being loud when the families or the victims themselves cannot be loud in the public.
00:41:30.989 --> 00:41:33.010
They need other people to be those mouthpieces.
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