Botched But Not Broken Karin's Cancer Triumph

She’s facing the future with confidence.

- Carmen Lichi

Tanned and radiant, Karin Horen is the picture of health. It’s not yet noon, but already the pint-sized mum-of-three – the former fiancée of Spartacus and The Hobbit star Manu Bennett – has done the school run and been out paddle boarding near her Auckland home.

But Karin, who battled breast cancer at 26 and again at 40, reveals the past couple of years have been among the most difficult of her life. A shock split from Manu, her partner of 10 years, came in December 2016, soon after she was hospitalised when her breasts became infected following reconstructive surgery.

“I woke up one morning and my whole upper body was red, sore and infected,” she recalls. “I had to be admitted as an emergency.”

Karin says Manu, 48, left for work in the US on the first of her eight days in hospital, during which she lost her right breast. Weeks later, while the devastated mum sought a second opinion in her native Israel, she says Manu moved out of the family home.

The couple’s break-up came 15 months after the Arrow actor was charged with assault for a punch-up at a fan convention in Texas, where a guest reportedly made a cruel jibe about his wife’s cancer battle.

The split was a surprise to her, says Karin. “I returned from Israel and he was gone, but I wasn’t devastated. I just felt calm, like that’s the way it should be, so I started my new journey.”