Dina Manzo’s daughter speaks out after stepfather’s conviction

The Real Housewives of New Jersey alum Dina Manzoher daughter speaks after her stepfather, Thomas Manzohe was convicted.

“‘Don’t poke the bear,'” Ioannu, 28, wrote via Instagram on Wednesday, October 23. “For the past decade I have remained silent for fear of biting the bears in my life. With clarity now I can share this truth not only for myself, but for my mother and all those who endure the your pain in silence My story is now available for you to read at the link in my bio.

Ionnau’s rise comes days after Thomas, 59, was sentenced to 84 months in prison for “hiring, then assisting, a Lucchese Crime Family soldier to assault” Dina’s now-husband. David Cantinin 2015. The decision was announced by US Atty Philip R. Sellinger in a news release issued by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey.

The document added that Thomas was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and was “ordered to abstain immediately.”

In a lengthy post on his Substack website, Ionnau began by reflecting on the expression “don’t poke the bear.”

“For over a decade, I have remained silent for fear of hitting Tommy Manzo, my 15-year-old stepfather, a proven dangerous man who earned the loyalty of my blood family,” he wrote. “I could write a novel about what made Tommy such a difficult man to raise, but instead I’ll talk about how I feared a man who promised to keep me safe and what it feels like to lose love for my extended family. Many of these family members were also figures I was afraid to confront, and they left me emotionally stranded.”

Ionnau explained that Thomas has known her since birth as his mother’s sister, carolineis married to his brother, Albert. Ionnau was 6 years old when her mother began a romantic relationship with Thomas, whom she married in 2007. The couple separated in 2012 and divorced four years later. She married Cantin in 2017.

“The long history of these relationships created a deeply rooted belief in the connectedness of our modern family,” Ionnau wrote. “We had confidence in who Tommy was as a man.”

“Tommy was an enigma: an extravagantly generous and charismatic figure who captured the affection of all those around him, earning the loyalty of church members, politicians and law enforcement,” he continued “To know Tommy was to love him. Yet beneath this veneer of charm lay a complexity of darker undertones, raising questions about the true intentions of their relationships and the reality behind the facade.”

Ionnau went on to allege that Thomas “was an unavailable husband, a notorious cheater and a workaholic.”

“I watched as he dangled the promise of a better future in front of my mother as he stripped her of her trust, broke her and used me as leverage in his manipulations,” she claimed. “A single mother’s hope lies in finding a partner who loves her child. I now recognize these heartbreaks as sacrifices my mother endured by loving me more than she loved herself.”

Ionnau claimed that her relationship with Thomas “only scratched the surface”, claiming that “his dysfunctions prevented any real understanding between us”.

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“To me, he was a shadowy figure of a father who expressed love through transactional gestures. A forced seat on his lap and an awkward kiss on the cheek earned me a $100 bill, a currency of affection which I never asked for,” he alleged. “He objectified me in his strange ways as his beloved ‘daughter.’ Tommy loved me, but his love for me was for himself. He was a financial provider, restoring some comforts lost after my parents’ divorce parents, but he exercised that power with the knowledge of what he could get away with.”

After Dina, 52, left Thomas in 2012, Ionnau recalled that their divorce was “amicable” before claiming her stepfather engaged in “psychological warfare” when he realized the star de Bravo had “begun to advance.”

“He forcibly removed me from our home without warning,” she wrote. “’Forced out’ barely captures reality; he shook me violently on a sleepy winter morning, giving me only thirty minutes to “get it.”

Ioannu claimed that Thomas’ “rage” manifested itself in “acts of unspeakable violence, starting with a calculated physical attack in 2015, aimed directly at my mother’s new husband. A spineless act of jealousy and revenge. This be followed by a horrific home invasion in 2017, an attempt to instill terror in both my mother and her husband.”

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In the years that followed, Ioannu alleged that Thomas would “try to reach out to me, taking me as a pawn in his twisted games and holding me emotionally hostage.”

“These incidents were terrifying and involved the people closest to me,” he continued. “The memories of them cast a long and bewildering shadow over our lives, each of us carrying our own experience of trauma and pain.”

Ioannu recalled sitting in court and hearing Thomas’ lawyers plead not guilty in April. He claimed they “painted their actions as misguided attempts to protect me.”

“As I listened to the testimony of mob associates, friends and law enforcement, the magnitude of his obsessive rage became painfully clear,” he wrote. “His reach was unsettling, employing private investigators and violent men to trace our movements over many years. I found myself covered in a veil of shock and shame, struggling to reconcile how I could be raised by someone capable of hurt me Tommy’s guilt was eventually established in court, which landed him in a prison cell.

Although she noted that Caroline, 63, was “more than an aunt” to her, Ioannu claimed that she chose “the side of my mother’s abuser and went so far as to write a letter of character in Tommy’s defense.” (Us Weekly contacted Caroline for comment.)

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“What could compel someone to form an alliance with a criminal for their own blood?” Ioannu added. “Some might describe him as ‘thick as thieves’. Meanwhile, my mother’s sister Cookie continued to work for him and even appeared in court in his support. A worrying lack of loyalty despite having shared a house with us and to have borne witness to Tommy’s darkness.

Ioannu also stated that some of his relatives have chosen “the path of silence”. Although she noted that she “felt trapped within the layers of my own story,” Ioannu said she realized that Thomas “was never the bear,” but instead is.

“This piece is a statement, a refusal to live up to those I once perceived to have power over me,” he concluded. “I share this truth not only for myself, but for my mother and all those who endure her pain in silence. I invite you to reclaim your power if you feel you have lost it. Be the bear.”

After the upload, Dina re-shared the post via her Instagram story and praised her daughter. “What a beautiful bear he is,” Dina wrote. “My heart broke into a million pieces when I read this, but I couldn’t be more proud of the woman behind these profound words.”

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