Michelle Horton had seen her sister Nikki’s bruises, but she continued to accept all her explanations for them. “In my head, I accepted the rationalizations, because you don’t want to think that something like that could be happening to someone that you love – and in my sister’s case, I don’t think I even had the imagination to fathom what was actually going on,” Horton told CTV News. She soon got a glimmer of what her sister experienced when Nikki Addimando went on trial for murdering her husband. “He attempted to do what so many abusers do in the end, which is a murder suicide, and thankfully, luckily, she thwarted that – but unfortunately, she was then ushered into the prison system,” Horton said. The New York state mother tells her side of the story in her book Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival and Unbreakable Bonds. Addimando’s sentence was eventually reduced on appeal to seven-and-a-half years. Horton says Nikki and her two kids now a very loving relationship – a relationship they tried to foster during her time behind bars. Horton will speak at the Calgary Petroleum Club on March 6 as part of She Is, an International Women’s Day event.
