Why the Menendez brothers' abuse allegations are resurfacing

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A Northeastern University professor says the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who are serving life sentences for the 1989 shooting deaths of their wealthy parents, highlights a major societal shift in the way male victims of childhood sexual abuse are perceived and be believed.

Around the time they were convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of Jose and Kitty Menendez, the young men were ridiculed in newspaper columns, talk shows and even “Saturday Night Live” as motivated by greed.

But 28 years after their conviction, family members are calling for the brothers' release, saying they were driven to despair by years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, a well-known entertainment industry executive.

Carlos Cuevas, Northeastern professor of criminology and criminal justice, said in the decades since Menendez's conviction there has been increasing recognition that childhood sexual abuse affects both boys and girls.

Tens of thousands of victims

“Over time, it has become more open to talk about abuse in general and the abuse of boys in particular,” Cuevas says.

Investigations and complaints about the involvement of powerful institutions in covering up the abuse of boys and young men also caused a stir. The Boston Globe's 2002 Spotlight series on the Catholic Church's cover-up won a Pulitzer Prize for public service.

In recent years, the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America have spent billions of dollars to resolve decades-long cases in which tens of thousands of victims were abused as boys and young men by priests and scout leaders.

“The Catholic Church scandal probably brought it to the forefront even more,” Cuevas says. “But since the 1980s it's actually been a gradual process of recognizing that childhood sexual abuse, including the bullying of boys, is a real problem,” he says.

The effects of childhood sexual abuse

“But in certain circumstances it's still kind of minimized, in a way that I don't think is minimized when the victim is a girl or a woman,” Cuevas says, adding that this may be because More girls and women are affected by sexual abuse.

According to RAINN, a victim advocacy organization, one in nine girls and one in 20 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault.

Regardless of whether the survivor is male or female, the effects of sexual assault can be severe, including post-traumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, depression, anxiety and substance abuse, Cuevas says.

Survivors may also struggle with dissociative disorders, self-harm and panic attacks, says RAINN.

The effects are typical of “the kind of things you see in people who have survived sexual abuse,” Cuevas says. “And they can be particularly exacerbated by not believing or supporting them.”

Extreme physical retaliation or murder is rare, he says. “Most abuse victims don’t kill their abusers. That doesn’t happen often.”

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Victims… and murderers

Cuevas says what complicates the Menendez case in the popular imagination is the brothers' perpetuation of a heinous crime in which they shot their parents while the couple watched television in the den of their villa.

“People tend to label you. “You’re either a victim or a perpetrator,” he says, adding that in reality you can be both.

“Many people who commit crimes and crimes are also victims of abuse or other forms of victimization,” Cuevas says.

“It's really hard for people to understand the context, which is that they committed a serious crime but were also victims of abuse.”

Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were 21 and 18 respectively at the time of the murders, may get the chance to tell their side of the story again in court as their case is reviewed for possible resentencing by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón after new evidence emerged.

The evidence includes a letter that Erik Menendez allegedly wrote to his cousin Andy Cano, which refers to the abuse months before the murders, as well as claims by a member of the boy band Menudo, Roy Rossello, that he was abused by Jose Menendez back in 14 .

During the brothers' initial trial – one for each brother – their cousin Diane Vander Molen testified that 8-year-old Lyle told her that his father molested him when she lived in the Menendez home as a teenager.

Vander Molen testified that she told Kitty but never knew what happened to the boy's revelation. The trials ended with a hung jury.

During the second trial, which ended in a life sentence in 1996, prosecutors maintained that the abuse did not occur and that the judge did not allow the presentation of much evidence of the abuse, defense attorneys said.