Since a trailer debuted this week for an upcoming documentary series that includes an explosive rape allegation from a member of the 1980s boy band Menudo against late music exec José Menéndez, LAMag has learned that fresh sex abuse claims are now surfacing against the murdered businessman.
“It’s time for the world to know the truth,” Roy Rosselló says in the trailer for the documentary, which was released on the Today show on Tuesday. The former Menudo star is heard in the spot accusing him of drugging and raping him at the Menéndez home in New Jersey, saying: “I know what he did to me in his house.”
This major accusation mirrors the defense offered by Erik and Lyle Menéndez after they killed their parents—Jose and their mom, Mary Louise, a former beauty queen who went by “Kitty,”—with shotgun blasts in the living room of their Beverly Hills mansion. The siblings said it was because they lived in fear of their father after years of sexual abuse at his hands.
In the clip, Erik Menéndez reacts to the Menudo superstar’s bombshell allegation, saying he felt “horrible.”
“It’s sad to know there was another victim of my father. You know, I always hoped and believed that one day the truth about my dad would come out. But I never wished for it to come out like this … the result of trauma that another child has suffered,” he says.
A source close to the Peacock production tells LAMag that more individuals claiming to be victims of the late Menéndez are now contacting the filmmakers.
This is exactly what Robert Rand says he was hoping the film would provoke. It’s Rand’s reporting, along with his writing partner, Nery Ynclan, that will be featured in the series.
“The stories about Jose Menéndez and his obsession with Menudo have been around for 30 years, “Rand, the author of The Menéndez Murders, tells LAMag. “It was our hope that Roy’s honesty would allow other victims to come forward.”
The first prosecution of the Menéndez brothers, which began in 1993, ended in mistrials with hung juries for both individual cases. The brothers were retried together two years later and found guilty; they were sentenced to life in prison. Rand says he believes some of the male jurors he interviewed were close-minded to the idea that the boys could be victims of sexual abuse.
“They thought a father wouldn’t do that to a son,” Rand said. “Society has evolved since then and I think people are open to the idea that this kind of abuse happens to boys—to men—as well as girls and women.”
Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18 years old when they carried out the killings of their parents. Rand began covering the story outside the Beverly Hills mansion for the Miami Herald the day after the slayings and has become close to the brothers over the 33 years they have spent in prison. He says he thinks that the new evidence could earn a closer look at their longstanding assertion that their father was abusive.
The new docuseries is set to premiere on Peacock on May 2.
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