A Northeastern University professor says the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who are serving life imprisonment for the shooting deaths of their wealthy parents in 1989, indicates a major societal shift in how male victims of childhood sexual abuse are perceived — and believed. Around the time they were convicted of first-degree murder for killing Jose and Kitty Menendez, the young men were ridiculed in newspaper columns, talk shows and even “Saturday Night Live” as being motivated by greed.
But 28 years after their sentencing, family members are calling for the brothers’ release, saying they were driven to desperation by longtime sexual abuse at the hands of their father, a well-known executive in the entertainment industry. Carlos Cuevas, Northeastern professor of criminology and criminal justice, says in the decades since the Menendez sentencing there has been growing recognition that childhood sexual abuse affects boys as well as girls.
