John Joseph Gotti was raised by an abusive, absent father in a household of 11 children. He once said of his old man, “He never did nothin’. He never earned nothin’. And we never had nothin’.” A high school dropout determined to make something of himself, Gotti entered a life of crime and rose to the head of the Gambino family. In her new memoir, “This Family of Mine,” John’s daughter Victoria Gotti reveals how her father’s life in the mob left his wife and five kids — Angel, Victoria, John, Frank and Peter — suffering years of torment, anxiety and regret. Victoria tells the family’s intimate secrets — the lies her father told her, the bloody battles between her parents over his disreputable lifestyle, the sleazy visits to him in prison. At the age of 7, she writes, she discovered the truth about her father’s life in the Mafia. He died in prison at the age of 61 in 2002 — after giving her his blessing to write their story.
