Teresa Giudice on blaming husband for her prison sentence: 'I need to let it go and move on'
— -- "Real Housewives of New Jersey" star Teresa Giudice said she blames her husband, Joe Giudice, for causing their family's recent legal woes that landed both of them in prison.
"I do blame him because if he was on top of everything then this wouldn’t have happened," Giudice told ABC News. "He keeps saying, 'You just got to move on from this. You can’t keep bringing up the past.' It’s true. I need to let it go and move on."
Giudice, 45, was released from prison in December 2016 after serving 11-and-a-half months in the wake of pleading guilty to multiple offenses that included bankruptcy fraud. Her husband also pleaded guilty to federal crimes including hiding assets and failing to pay taxes, and is still serving his own 41-month prison sentence.
The television personality said one of the lowest points of her tumultuous past year was when her mother died, which is partly what inspired her to write her new book, "Standing Strong."
"Going away to prison was nothing, I'm just saying, compared to losing my mom. ... And that's why it made me open up so much with the book," she said. "After I lost my mom, something snapped inside of me and I got really angry.
"I lost time with my mom. So that's what made me spill everything," she added. "Those 11-and-a-half months I wish I was hanging out with my mom instead of being away from my family."
The mother of four said she has acclimated to her new life with her husband behind bars, but added she worries how his time in prison will affect their children.
"They miss him tremendously. It’s their dad," she said of her four daughters.
She adds that as a mother, she struggled with how to tell her youngest daughter, who just turned 8, what happened.
"The three oldest know ... and the baby says that, 'Mommy, people do say that Daddy’s in jail,' and I say, 'You know what honey ... you’re too young to understand whats really going on, when you get older, Mommy and Daddy will explain everything to you.'
"I don’t feel like I should have gone away," Giudice added of her time in prison. "I did what a lot of others do, you know, if their husbands tell them to sign something, they do that."
Giudice added that she feels like her children were punished most when she served her sentence "because I don’t think I should have been away from my daughters for one day."
"I'm an adult, I had no problem doing my time," she added. "But who got punished was my daughters."
The reality TV star also told ABC News that she regrets being a part of the "Real Housewives of New Jersey," the franchise that skyrocketed her to fame.
"I didn’t go looking for this. It came to me ... Producers came to a salon in New Jersey It’s not like I wanted to be famous," she said. "When you’re famous and you’re young then you go partying, and you go to all the parties and stuff, I wasn’t into that. I’m married with three kids, I’m going to stay home, I have to be a housewife."
"If I had to do it all over again, I don’t know if I would do the show again," she added.
When asked if she thought divorce would ever be an option for her and her husband, Giudice said, "I can’t predict the future."
"We’re going to start living life again and see what happens. I mean things have definitely changed. They can’t go back to the way they were," she added.
She said going forward, however, she will keep their finances separate.
"I’ll never sign anything ever again. We’re definitely going to do things separately in that aspect of it," she said.
Giudice's new book, "Standing Strong," is currently available in stores nationwide.
