Erik Menendez is upset about the “dishonest portrayal” of his life in Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erick Menendez Story.”
Erik and his older brother, Lyle, were convicted of fatally shooting their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, in 1989. The two brothers, who are serving life sentences for the killings, claimed that they acted in self-defense following a lifetime of abuse from their father. Erik, in a message published on social media by his wife, termed the series, which was co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, “ruinous.”
Erik Menendez Says Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monsters’ Is Full Of ‘Blatant Lies’
“I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show,” Menendez wrote at the time. “It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.”
The nine-episode series revisits the tragedy from numerous angles, including speculation about the brothers’ relationship and prosecutors’ claims that the killings were motivated by money.
“It is sad for me to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward — back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women,” said Menendez. “Isn’t the truth enough? Let the truth be the truth. How demoralising to know that one powerful man can undo decades of effort in casting light on childhood trauma.”
Murphy and Brennan have not publicly responded to Menendez’s post.
“[The show] is really more interested in talking about how monsters are made as opposed to born,” Murphy told a panel at an early screening of the show’s first episode, according to Netflix. “We try to not have too much judgement about that because we’re trying to understand why they did something, as opposed to the act of doing something.”
Erik Menendez Says Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monsters’ Is Full Of ‘Blatant Lies’
The second season of “Monsters” was launched last week, after “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” Erik Menendez, 53, and Lyle Menendez, 56, are serving their sentences at the same penitentiary facility near San Diego, California. Last year, their attorneys filed a petition arguing that fresh evidence in the case should have overturned their convictions.
“Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic,” Menendez stated in an email. “As such, I hope it is never forgotten that violence against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamour and rarely exposed until tragedy penetrates everyone involved.”
SOURCE | AP
