Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

Description

In the final episode of Believe Her, Nikki reflects on the shocking outcome of her appeal and what this means for others in similar situations going forward. Justine talks to criminalized survivors across the U.S. about how and why they were incarcerated for their attempts to protect themselves or loved ones from abuse.

Resources:

• For more information about Nikki’s case and to sign a petition supporting her clemency application, follow the We Stand With Nikki campaign on Instagram at @westandwithnikki, on Twitter at @standwithnikki and on their webpage at www.westandwithnikki.com.
• If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, use a safe computer and contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at www.thehotline.org or call 1-800-799-7233. You can also search for a local domestic violence shelter at www.domesticshelters.org/.
• If you have experienced sexual assault and need support, visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) at www.rainn.org or call 1-800-656-HOPE.
• Ask Governor Kathy Hochul to grant Nikki clemency: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdcpFz75UUqWr5JUtd5H_CrwbGk1F0ThenVbufgdg5jJPNtxw/viewform?fbclid=IwAR0Fx-dDbJO3Wvz25kJ2q334hKffYojaIxZeFJBQRnVuWdcO1RDCGH4pDbw
• Have questions about consent? Take a look at this guide from RAINN at www.rainn.org/articles/what-is-consent.
• Learn more about the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act at www.nysda.org/page/DVSJA.
• Learn more about criminalized survival across the U.S. at https://survivedandpunished.org/.
• Read Justine’s Dec. 2020 article on criminalized survival in the U.S. at https://newrepublic.com/article/160589/women-prison-domestic-violence-survivors.
• Support incarcerated survivor Tanisha Williams by visiting https://standwithtanisha.com/.
• Support incarcerated survivor Tomiekia Johnson by visiting https://www.change.org/p/gavin-newsom-grant-commutation-for-incarcerated-survivor-tomiekia-johnson.
• Read Sandra Brown’s writing by visiting https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004441651/BP000023.xml.
• Learn more about incarcerated survivor Kelly Harnett’s story at https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/kelly-harnett/.

Justine van der Leun is the host and lead reporter. This series is produced by Justine van der Leun and supervising producer Kristen Lepore. The associate producer is Giulia Hjort. The production assistant is Rory James Leech. Additional reporting by Kristen Lepore and Giulia Hjort. Mixing and sound design by Kegan Zema. Music by RRA aka Sara Abdelaal. Fact checking by Justin Kloczko. Additional audio engineering by Ivan Kuraev. Story editing by Jackie Danziger. Story consulting by Amy Metsch. The executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and Spiegel & Grau.

Believe Her is created in partnership with Spiegel & Grau. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram at @spiegelandgrau.

Follow Justine on Twitter at @justinevdl and on Instagram at @jvanderleun.

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

If you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, please join our Believe Her podcast community on Bookclubz at www.bit.ly/believeherbookclubz and our Facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/believeher/.

Interested in bonus content and behind the scenes material? Subscribe to Lemonada Premium right now in the Apple Podcasts app by clicking on our podcast logo and the “subscribe” button.

Stay up-to-date on everything in the Lemonada world by becoming a superfan at https://joinsubtext.com/lemonadasuperfan.

Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and all other Lemonada series: lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.

To follow along with a transcript, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/believeher shortly after the air date.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Caitlin Sanford, Justine van der Leun, Sandra Brown, Michelle Horton, Nikki Addimando, Elizabeth Clifton, Monica Cosby, Lisa Whalen, Kristen

Justine van der Leun  01:05

Hi, listeners, if you’re just tuning in, I suggest you go back and start listening from chapter one. And before we start, a content warning, this episode contains accounts of domestic and sexual violence.

Speaker 1 

I’ve always maintained that I’ve been falsely arrested, incarcerated for a murder that I did not complete due to accidental homicide that took place when I was trying to defend myself from my husband who was trying to actually murder me. So I have a 25 to life murder charge and a 25 to life gun […]

Speaker 2 

My name is Kelly Harnett. I am now 40 years old. I’ve been in prison for almost 11 years now. I was convicted of second-degree murder and subsequently sentenced to 17 years to life. I was a victim of domestic violence. My co-defendant was my boyfriend at the time. He was actually a UFC fighter, and his hands registered deadly weapons.

Justine van der Leun  02:16

These women you’re hearing from are criminalized survivors like Nikki Addimando. Here’s Sandra Brown. She’s finishing a 22-year sentence.

Sandra Brown 

You know, I still ask this question even though I’m on my way out the door. Where was the law when I needed defending? Where was the law when I needed protecting? When I did tell, and because I could not prove it wasn’t on camera or because others who witnessed wouldn’t substantiate it. Now I’m making it up. But the one time I say no, I need to fight back. It’s either fight or die. Now I’m the monster, now I’m the murderer and now society needs to be protected against me.

Justine van der Leun 

Sandra survived, and for that, she has been made out to be a monster. This is the reality for so many others that I’ve spoken to since I started reporting on Nikki’s case. It’s the reality for Tanisha Williams and Tracy McCarter for Kelly Forbes and Natasha […] for Laura Martin, and Madison George. And the list goes on and on and on.

Justine van der Leun 

This is BELIEVE HER. I’m Justine van der Leun

Justine van der Leun 

Chapter Six criminalized survival. After I began reporting Nikki’s story, I started to wonder, is this a one off? Or is it happening all the time? I interviewed dozens of experts, attorneys, educators and formerly and currently incarcerated women. And I talked to people like Kellyann Kostyal-Larrier, the domestic violence expert you’ve heard from throughout this series.

Michelle Horton  04:04

Nikki could have left that night; she could have left in a body bag. That was the alternative. And we would have talked about Nikki we would have added her to a list of victims who have been murdered. And we would have talked about what we need to do to address domestic homicides. Because that’s what we do. Women are murdered every single day at the hands of their intimate partners when they’re trying to leave. The only difference is that they would have forgotten her name because there would have been another one the next day somewhere else. This is absolutely about Nikki and it’s bigger than Nikki that the system cannot work like this. It is so egregious that we are criminalizing victims at this […]. That there are so many victims currently sitting behind bars for managing to stay alive, or for the crimes of their abusers.

Justine van der Leun 

When I started investigating Nikki’s story, everyone I interviewed told me the same thing. Women’s prisons are full of criminalized survivors, people who’ve been arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated for actions they took to protect themselves or a loved one from physical or sexual violence. But that was anecdotal. There was no data on this. So I talked to a Yale Political science professor, and she helped me make a survey, a survey that would start to answer this question, how many people were in the system because they survived, like Nikki. I contacted almost every single state correctional department and I requested a list of all the people incarcerated for murder and manslaughter in women’s prisons. I wanted to mail my survey to each and every one of them. And then I realized that I hadn’t been to a post office in probably a decade, and that stamps cost 55 cents each. But it was too late. I was in it for the long haul. I got grants, and my neighbor did a fundraiser for me. And then I stuffed 1000s of envelopes nearly 10,000 to date. And I sent my survey to the people on these lists. I didn’t ask any leading questions about abuse or victimization, I just asked them to tell me about their stories and their backgrounds.

Justine van der Leun  06:26

So far, around 1000 people have answered my survey. It’s an ongoing project, and I’m writing a book about it. But an early analysis of these surveys, and the piles and piles of letters that have accompanied them shows that at least 30% of my respondents are criminalized survivors. I’ve now looked into a lot of these cases. And there’s a pretty standard pattern similar to Nikki’s. Remember how for the six years leading up to Chris’s killing, two police departments had records that describe Nikki as a victim, as did the county sexual assault forensic program, the hospital, the Office of Victim Services, a domestic violence agency, and the local district attorney’s office. And yet nobody in the system could help Nikki find true safety. The system just didn’t function to protect her. For Nikki and the others, this same system that couldn’t get it together to help them well, when it came to prosecuting them. Suddenly, that system was powerful, well-funded, strategic and efficient. When the system wants to punish a person, it finds a way. And there are certain people that the system really wants to punish.

Monica Cosby 

So if the police roll up on a couple, and they’re fighting in the street, and a Black woman, knock the shit of out her partner, because he knocked the shit out of her. They’re both going to jail. They both might get shot, but they’re going to come and try to rescue and save the White girl.

Justine van der Leun 

That’s Monica Cosby. She’s a mom, an activist and a survivor who served 20 years in Illinois prison, and she knows how the system fails Black women like her.

Monica Cosby  08:08

You could die calling the police. You can go to jail, calling the police trying to save yourself. And a lot of that has to do like straight up racism, right and who gets to be a victim and who don’t, and who’s the perfect victim and who ain’t.

Justine van der Leun 

Nikki had a lot on her side. Nikki is straight. She’s white. She had no criminal record. And she had a community of people fighting for her freedom. So if this happened to Nikki, than what happens to marginalize people. One of the first recorded cases of criminalized survival occurred in 1855 in Missouri when an enslaved pregnant 19-year-old named Celia killed the man who had bought her when she was just 14. He’d been raping her for five years when one night he came into her cabin and she fought back. Celia was convicted of murder by a white male jury, she had a stillbirth and was hanged. Today, black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across the country at nearly five times the rate of white Americans, their sentences can be worse, too. Women of color are disproportionately subjected to extreme sentences. Nationally, one of every 39 Black women in prison is serving life without parole, compared with one of every 59 in prison white women. Monica says she was sent away because she was involved in a crime that her abuser committed. Here she is talking about that relationship.

Monica Cosby 

When it really dawned on me that it was beyond violent, but like life threatening. I did the stuff that I had learned and made a whole safety plan. I had a place to go and everything and the night that I was going you know partner found out. I was not going to let my kids die so I fucking fog. I think we expect people to be sorry to be alive, right? To be sorry for surviving, it’s like how dare a bitch survive? Like the only way you can prove you were a victim is if you’d like actually die.

Monica Cosby  10:37

And then we’ll still say shit, like oh, they didn’t even fight back they just let themselves be killed. It’s like we can’t even help but blame a woman.

Justine van der Leun 

Monica was locked up when her youngest daughter was a year old. When she got out, her daughter was an adult. What would you want to see done specifically for criminalized survivors in prison?

Justine van der Leun

Let them the fuck out. And make sure they have a place to live and a chance to heal, right? A place to live and a chance to heal and the support that they need.

Justine van der Leun 

When Judge Edward McLaughlin sentence Nikki her first possible release date was the year 2036. She’d be nearly 50 years old. Her son Ben would be 23, her daughter Faye would be 21. That’s if Nikki got parole on her first try, which is extremely rare. Nikki has now been locked up for four years. She’s missed half of Ben’s childhood and the majority of Faye’s childhood and Nikki’s growing older, too, her jet-black hair has gotten streaked with silver. This November, she’s turning 33 in prison. Here’s her family singing to her.

Justine van der Leun  14:36

That’s what the family has been subsisting on. On the one hand, every single time Nikki and her supporters had worked for one outcome, they got the opposite. It always went bad. Wasn’t it foolish to even entertain the possibility that the appeals process would go any different? But on the other hand, why bother trying anything at all in life if you don’t think that there’s just a tiny chance that things might change for the better. Soon after Nikki’s arrest, Elizabeth the music teacher and Nikki’s Sister Michelle started a group called we stand with Nikki. First it was just the two of them. But it’s snowballed, and it’s been really effective. That trial that Nikki lost, her legal bills topped $285,000. The we stand with Nikki people held vigils, they did walks, runs, art shows, social media blasts, auctions to fundraise and they covered it in full. They operate with military level precision; they have a whole chain of command run through smartphones and apps. I call them the purple people, the color of domestic violence awareness. And everywhere you went with the story, there were groups of locals looking angry or mournful, and wearing purple, purple T-shirts, purple sweaters, purple hats, and holding signs that said things like, stop silencing abuse victims.

Justine van der Leun  16:24

This level of organizing isn’t the norm. There just aren’t groups of people crooning on the sidewalks outside of all the jails and prisons in America. Usually, a conviction marks the end of life as you knew it, of your freedom. Once a person is convicted of murder, their backstory is deemed irrelevant. They fit into one category only, guilty. One woman in a Texas prison sent me a letter. The world at large has forgotten us, she wrote. But Michelle wouldn’t let the world forget Nikki. She had to quit her job to manage everything. So now, Michelle is Nikki’s main advocate. She’s raising Ben and Faye along with her own son as a single parent. And Michelle is trying to make up for what she didn’t do earlier. Michelle told me she feels like a fire has been ignited inside her. She’s educated herself on domestic and sexual abuse. And she thinks a lot about what happened in her own family. She has to confront all of that if she wants to break the cycle of trauma and violence. These days, a big part of her activism is helping people reframe how they think about these things. When I asked Michelle what Nicki should have done to avoid her situation, she flipped that question.

Michelle Horton 

The question of what should she have done, just hearing it bothers me. Because it then puts the ownership on her. Rather than what should those grown ass men have done? What should my mom have done? What should all the agencies who knew should what should they have done? The professionals who do this? Are paid to do this? What should the district attorney’s office have done? What should Chris have done? Should Chris have done this to the mother of their child? It really just so deeply bothers me that we put it on the woman that what she have done? Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t he stop? Why didn’t he want her to be safe? Why was she continuously exploited again and again and again, and it has never stopped and it’s not going to stop anytime soon.

Justine van der Leun  18:42

In the last episode, Nikki was sitting in Bedford Hills waiting, just waiting for the appellate court to make a decision. I was in the middle of interviewing Michelle when Nikki called her, looking for an update.

Michelle Horton

Every day she calls in a panic, thinking there’s news. I mean, every day and if I don’t answer or something like whatever she’s like, what happened? She’s just and she and the horrible part of it is I am probably going to know first and I am probably going to have to be the one to tell her and I hate that role.

Justine van der Leun  20:03

But Michelle had been thrust into that role which had become even more extreme during the pandemic. When COVID hit, Michelle and the kids went months without seeing Nikki because Bedford Hills shut down to visitors. Like almost all correctional facilities in the US, Bedford Hills had major COVID outbreaks. And at one point, Nikki lost her sense of smell and taste, and her head hurts so much that she couldn’t lift it from her pillow. The pandemic also slowed down the already glacial legal system. After Nikki’s appeal. Her lawyer said he didn’t know when the justices would make their decision. So Nikki called Michelle every day in anticipation. And after three months of making these calls, there was finally news. Big news. On July 14 2021, I got a text message from Elizabeth, the music teacher. It read. Did you hear the appeal decision came back. After nearly three months, the Supreme Court of the state of New York Appellate Division had finally released their ruling. And so less than 24 hours later, I was at Bedford Hills prison to talk to Nikki about it.

Nikki Addimando  22:59

Yeah, you’re the first person I’ve seen since this so I haven’t even like said this out loud. The appellate court believed me. And they re-sentenced me under the DVSJA. So instead of 19 to life, they re-sentenced me to seven and a half.

Justine van der Leun 

The appellate court said that Nikki’s abuse at the hands of Chris Grover was clearly documented, and they said Judge Edward McLaughlin should have given Nicky relief under the DVSJA. They wrote that McLaughlin’s decision was arcane, and they wrote that his ideas about domestic violence survivors were antiquated. As you can imagine, the new spread very quickly among the we stand with Nikki group. Here’s Caitlin from Episode Three.

Caitlin Sanford 

Oh my god, I just can’t stop laughing into tears. Ah, fuck I’m so really. I’m so really.

Justine van der Leun  24:08

And Lisa from episode four.

Lisa Whalen 

Oh my god just seen. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Finally, finally. I mean, she really shouldn’t be coming home today. But thank God there is an end to this. Thank goodness and for me thinking that Ben won’t be 21 when Nikki comes home, but it will maybe be 10when she comes home is huge for both of her kids.

Justine van der Leun 

Because Nikki had already served four years she had three and a half to go. But with good time, her clean record and other considerations, she could be out even sooner. Nikki, was one of the first people to be resentenced under the DVSJA. And that meant something.

Nikki Addimando 

This is a huge step. Not just for me, but in general for everyone, everyone after me, everyone who’s still waiting. And as I said all along, the most hurtful part was not being believed. And when they sentenced me, they said that my words didn’t matter. They said that, getting on the stand and sharing my story, and my experiences didn’t matter. And then the appellate court came in and gave that back.

Justine van der Leun 

But she knew that even with freedom on the horizon, nothing would ever be the same.

Nikki Addimando 

Even if I was acquitted, I still have a life sentence. I have to live with this for the rest of my life. I’ve lived with the memories of all of it for the rest of my life. I’ve lived the rest of my life knowing that I caused all this pain for so many people. Even if I did that to save myself, of course, I still feel enormous weight that I caused this heartache for our families.

Justine van der Leun  26:27

Nikki’s sister, Michelle, is one of the people who has lived with that heartache. She says this resentencing, it’s not enough.

Michelle Horton 

Everyone is like congratulations is the best news. And I’m like, kind of pissed off. I know that it’s a big deal that they reversed anything that like 90% of the time they don’t. But it’s like three more fucking years. Like he shouldn’t have even been arrested. We’re like, Oh, thank you, thank you appeals judges for giving us these scraps. How generous of you where it’s like the whole fucking system is complicit in this.

Justine van der Leun

Every single day, Michelle sees up close and personal, the utter devastation here. And for Michelle and Nikki and the children, none of this time is abstract. When you’re only six years old, like Nikki’s daughter, Faye, three years is half a lifetime. And yet, through all of this, Nikki’s friend and advocate, Elizabeth, she took the long view.

Elizabeth Clifton

I would imagine that a lot of advocates have to get to the point of like accepting what feels like a compromise. You know, like there is there’s probably rarely a total victory, you know, like a total where you feel like, yeah, we did it. Justice is done, you know, because you can’t make up for the past. You can’t take away all the horrible things that happened to Nikki. You can’t take away all the horrible, disgusting things that Hannah Kraus did. You can’t take away the mistakes that John and Ben made, you know, like, none of that can be erased. I don’t know. It’s just a real mix of feelings. But Chris always said to her, no one will believe you. And for someone to have believed her and made a decision based on that is really important.

Justine van der Leun  28:42

So these high-ranking justices who meticulously went over the evidence and the full trial transcripts, they believed Nikki, and that is really important. And if you consider this system valid, then you definitely give their decision wait, right? This appellate court is there to provide the checks and balances that we hold so dear. But let’s take a minute. The justices said that they believed the abuse happened, but they did not overturn the conviction. They still gave Nikki nearly eight years in their books. She’s still a murderer, not someone who defended herself. And we don’t know why they chose that number of years. We do know they could have totally reversed Nicky’s conviction. It was an option, but the Justice has declined to engage with what went down in the trial. They declined to overturn the jury’s decision. Many people think they simply focused on the DV SGA because it’s a new law and they wanted to set a precedent. Meanwhile, the main players at the District Attorney’s Office, Hannah Kraus and Robert Tandy, they’ve always said that in Nicky’s case, the system worked. The system found its way to the truth, the system did not fail. They seem to be saying again and again. Trust the system that the second the system went against them. Suddenly they said it was wrong. Our producer Christian called Robert Tendy the day after the appellate court decision.

Kristen 

These four judges believe the evidence that Grover did abuse her. Do you feel like that undermines what you presented in court?

Justine van der Leun  30:19

Because they weren’t at the trial. They didn’t see the witnesses testify. And they’re simply saying, We believe her. They’re not saying why they believe her. They’re just saying they do. I don’t know why they don’t believe the other witnesses. I don’t know why they don’t believe all the evidence that Chris Grover was a loving, caring man. This guy by all accounts, he has to be a really nice decent man who is very solicitous of women. Everybody loves this guy. For the record, the DA had over a month to argue against the appellate court decision, they decided to leave it be. Nikki’s resentencing was final. But there will always be people who insist Kristen do it. Like Robert Tendy, and that bothers Nikki.

Nikki Addimando

Inside my own, like, existence and well-being and understanding myself and what all this means. That has been the biggest mind? I can’t swear. That was the biggest mindfuck of all, basically, you know?

Justine van der Leun 

Those people will probably never ever believe Nikki, no matter what. And she’s going to have to live with that.

Nikki Addimando 

Sometimes, I feel like I’ve been reduced to a five-letter name in Times New Roman print.

Justine van der Leun

So what would you counter? Like, if you could say like, this is who I really am? What would you say?

Nikki Addimando  32:03

It seems like such an easy question. But even in like the […], the mandatory programs I’ve had to take here, the big, there’ll be a page in a workbook, you know, great little notebook from opening, and it’ll say, who am I? And I stare blankly at it? Because that seems like such a simple question. But when you’re always labeled and defined as something else, and I’m hearing that and seeing that over and over and over again. I don’t know anymore. The only thing that feels right, is that I’m a mom, every blank page, I just write I am and there’s a big blank space. And I say a mother. That’s it. I just want to go and raise my kids.

Justine van der Leun 

So if you could do that, what would that look like?

Nikki Addimando 

Well, if you ask Ben and Faye what that looks like they draw pictures of it all the time. And they have all of these ideas. We always talk about, you know, the house that we’ll build and live in together. And they call that our safe house. And Ben insists that we have to have everything we could ever need, including a garden with beans for mommy’s veggie chili so that she never loses me again.

Justine van der Leun 

So you never have to leave. So it’s totally self-sufficient.

Justine van der Leun 

So what’s it look like?

Nikki Addimando 

Ben says we need doors made out of steel and faces. We need surveillance cameras. And I said what four? She said so the police can never take you again. They want a moat around us. Nobody can get to us. They’re afraid that if I come back, that I could be taken again at any moment. Faye says I want you to come home and I’m still a little girl. I look at her now. And she’s already six. She was two. She was in diapers. She was a baby. Ben was so little too and he’s a big kid now. And he came last week. He’s sitting across from me and he’s like, mom, since you’re missing all my childhood opens his mouth and pulses without he wanted to meet. Yup, this is a second time he’s done it since being here too. Since I’ve been here. He wants me to witness him losing his teeth.

Justine van der Leun  34:36

So he saved it. I’m a little string in his mouth flipping it around waiting to the visit?

Nikki Addimando

Yes. And then he put it on a napkin, put it across the table and looked at me and said aren’t you so happy? Nice. random question as he’s got blood coming out of his mouth and he’s using, you know, prison paper towels to suck it up. But he didn’t want me to miss his childhood.

Justine van der Leun  35:06

The minute Nikki heard about her re-sentencing, she began to plan how she would tell Ben and Faye. She wanted to do it in person, and she wanted to have a precise date to tell them.

Nikki Addimando 

I want to get counted, I guess it’s going to have to be like two or three calendars stapled together. But I want to have that for the kids. They’re going to be able to count the boxes. And there’s just going to be a big car on the day and they can say mommy comes home on this day, because right now they’re living in uncertainty. I can hardly do it. How can they?

Justine van der Leun

In the end, the kids came to Bedford Hills for a visit, and Nikki was characteristically creative. Preschool Teacher, remember? She recounted the visit to me in an email. After their greetings and hugs, they all sat down in the vast violet visiting room, which looks out on a dry lawn, and then these fences topped with razor wire. Nikki dumped a vending machine bag of Skittles on a paper towel, and she lined up 19 candies. Then she told the kids she had something important to say. They got very still. She told them. This is how many years the first judge the one who didn’t understand wanted me to stay here. Count them. Ben counted 19 Skittles. Nikki told them. Some people wanted it to be more. But people fought really hard. And now I have this many years here. Then, she swiped away all of the Skittles. But three, the kids’ faces lit up. Wait, mom, they said, the people who fought for us? Did they use their hands or their words to fight? Nikki told her. They use their words. They were bold and brave, and they didn’t stop using their words. Because it matters. And you know what else matters?

Justine van der Leun  36:57

The new judges mentioned you, Ben and Faye’s eyes got wide. Nikki told them. The judges said I’m a mommy of two young children. And it isn’t fair to keep mommy here for all those years. She pointed at the discarded Skittles. So Faye, you’ll turn seven and eight. And then I’ll come home when you’re nine. Ben, you’ll turn 9 and 10. And when you’re 11, I’ll come home. For a moment, Faye looked deflated. Nikki told the kids. It’s okay to be happy and sad at once. I’m so happy to judge that I can go home. But I’m so sad that it’s not right now. Then they were all quiet. But only for a moment. Because very quickly, they all started talking about what they do together, all the fun they’d have just in three years. And then Ben wanted to be sure that even when Nikki came home, they kept fighting for mommies who were in prison. And Nikki said yes, that was her plan, too.

Nikki Addimando  38:02

This isn’t just about us in our family. This is about everybody else. So it doesn’t stop now, it just starts. So I’m not going to walk away and be quiet now either because there’s a lot of people in here who need help. They need people fighting for them the same way that I have people fighting for me. So while I really want to be relieved that this is almost over, it’s really not almost over. But that’s exciting. Right?

Justine van der Leun

And so you might say, there is some justice after all. But is that really justice? Seven and a half years in prison for surviving? And even then, is it justice if it’s for Nikki at a Mando, but not to […] Johnson and Kelly […] or Sandra Brown or Monica Cosby or all the other people serving decades across the country? If justice depends on luck and privilege and money and groups of supporters and attention from the media, from podcasts like this, then that’s not justice for all. It’s just working and manipulating the system. But within that reality, there’s something to consider. Systems are designed by people. They can also be redesigned or dismantled by the collective action of regular people. The Purple’s are the most regular people, their moms, their college administrators, social workers, hairdressers, pharmacists, babysitters, music teachers, they didn’t know how to run a freedom campaign. But they learned and they learned from activists that have survived and punished. A network conceived up and led largely by Black feminists. Black communities have always been battling these inequitable systems, and so have indigenous, immigrant, and LGBTQ plus communities.

Justine van der Leun  40:12

Communities comprised of people whose very existence is monitored and criminalized. They are the ones who have been protesting running campaigns and raising funds for those in women’s prisons. For as long as anyone can remember. The black feminist activist survived and punished. They gave the purple people their playbook, and the purple people got to work. And that work, it’s not ending anytime soon. In large part due to their advocacy, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul is considering a clemency application for Nikki. Clemency as a sort of final check on the judicial system. It allows chief executives like Hochul to correct in justices on a case-by-case basis. With the stroke of a pen, the governor could set Nikki free. So as we asked in episode one, who’s more powerful, the people who want Nikki and other criminalized survivors to be free, are the people who want them to be locked away. And the answer is, it depends on us. What cycles do we want to break? What kind of world do we want to live in? What do we choose to believe in? And who do we choose to believe? And, if we choose to believe Nikki and criminalized survivors everywhere? How far will we go to get them free?

CREDITS  42:19

To learn more about Nikki’s case, and if you’d like to sign a petition supporting her clemency visit westandwithnikki.com. To learn more about criminalized survival visit survived and punished.org BELIEVE HER is a co-production of Lemonada and Spiegel and Grau. I’m your host and lead reporter, Justine van der Leun. The series is produced by me and our supervising producer Kristin Laporte, our Associate Producer Giulia Hjort, and our production assistant Rory James Leech. Mixing and sound design by Kegan Zema music by Sara Abdullah. Fact checking by Justin Classico. Story editing from Jackie Danziger. Additional audio engineering by Ivan Kuraev. Our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Spiegel and Grau. Thanks to Ariana Giles for editorial feedback. Special thanks to Michelle Horton and Elizabeth Clifton for archival tape. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, use a safe computer and contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at the hotline.org or call 1-800-799-7233 help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms or find me at @JustineVDL. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium. You can subscribe right now in the Apple podcasts app by clicking on our podcast logo and then the subscribe button. If you want to continue the conversation with other listeners please join our Believe Her podcast community on book clubs. Join for free at bit.ly/believeherbookclubz. Thank you so much for listening.