CNN
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Erik Menendez criticizes the “dishonest portrayal” of his life in the Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erick Menendez Story.”
Menendez was convicted along with his older brother Lyle for the fatal shooting of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, in 1989. The two brothers, who are serving life sentences for the murders, argued they acted in self-defense after suffering a lifetime of abuse from their father. In a statement shared by his wife on social media, Erik Menendez called the series, co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, “ruinous.”
“I thought we had moved beyond the lies and devastating character portrayals of Lyle and created a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrific and obvious lies that are rampant on the show,” Menendez wrote. “It is with a heavy heart that I must say that I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be so naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives to do this without malicious intent.”
The nine-part series examines the crime from various perspectives, including speculation about the brothers’ relationship and the prosecution’s argument that the murders were motivated by money.
“It saddens me to know that Netflix, with its dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime, has pushed painful truths back several steps — back to a time when prosecutors built a narrative on the belief system that men were not sexually assaulted and that men experienced rape trauma differently than women,” Menendenz wrote. “Isn’t the truth enough? Let the truth be the truth. How demoralizing it is to know that one man with power can undo decades of progress in solving childhood trauma.”
Murphy and Brennan have not publicly commented on Menendez’s post.
“(The show) is actually more interested in talking about how monsters are created than how they’re born,” Murphy said during a panel at an early screening of the show’s first episode, according to Netflix. “We try not to judge too much because we’re trying to understand why they did something, not how they did something.”
“Ultimately, no one knows the truth about what happened other than the two people currently in prison,” Brennan added.
The second season of “Monsters” was released last week and follows “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” Erik Menendez, now 53, and Lyle Menendez, 56, are serving their sentences at the same correctional facility near San Diego, California. Their lawyers argued in a petition last year that new evidence in the case should overturn their convictions.
“Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and always tragic,” Menendez wrote. “So I hope it will never be forgotten that violence against a child creates a hundred horrific and silent crime scenes, hidden behind glitz and glamour, only revealed when tragedy strikes all involved.”
