Erik Menendez Believes He Was Groomed Into Staying in Abusive Household

Erik Menendez is reflecting on his upbringing. 

In Netflix’s The Menendez Brothers, Erik shared that during his and his brother Lyle Menendez’s trial for the murder of their parents Jose Menendez and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, a big part of the prosecutor’s argument was that the brothers—who were 18 and 21 respectively at the time of the killings—should’ve left their family’s home. 

“Why I didn’t run away was the central part of the trial and the district attorney constantly saying, ‘Well you had the opportunity to leave,’” Erik said in the documentary, released on Netflix Oct. 7. “I was groomed to know I could never get away. The idea had been whipped deep and trained into my brain—programmed into my brain to know I could never escape.”

Erik, along with Lyle, alleged that the 1989 murders of their parents had taken place out of self defense. The brothers claimed that they had been physically and sexually abused by their father for their entire lives, but due to Jose’s status in the entertainment industry, felt trapped in their family dynamic.

“My father wasn’t a drunken guy sleeping in a street,” Erik continued in the documentary. “He was a superstar, successful, wealthy, powerful personality. And how he was going to raise his children, he was going to raise his children and there was no one that was going to interfere with it.”

In the new documentary, Erik, now 53, also details his complicated relationship with his parents in general—especially when reflecting on the murders. 

“One of the misconceptions is that I did not love my father or love my mother,” he says elsewhere in the doc. “That is the farthest thing from the truth. I miss my mother tremendously. I wish that I could go back and talk to her and give her a hug and tell her I love her and I wanted her to love me and be happy with me and be happy that I was her son and feel that joy and that connection. And I just want that.”

During the trial, though, Erik did receive vindication from his brother Lyle, now 56, who had molested him when the duo were adolescents. 

“I remember when he apologized to me on the stand for molesting me," Erik recalled. “That was a devastating moment for me."

As Erik put it, “He had never said sorry before."

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