Erik Menéndez claims he and Lyle were assaulted, traumatized in prison
Erik Menéndez is opening up about the "trauma" and "dangerous environment" of prison.
Menéndez and his brother, Lyle, have been in prison for three decades after being found guilty of murdering their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion. According to a new interview, the brothers found prison to be a dark and dangerous place.
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In a phone interview with the TMZ podcast 2 Angry Men podcast (which is co-hosted by the brothers' lawyer Mark Geragos), Menéndez opened up about some of the alleged hardships he and his brother have faced while incarcerated. "Prison was hard for me. I faced a lot of bullying and trauma," Menéndez said. "It was a dangerous environment."
"I was picked on, bullied violently, and it was traumatic and it was continual," he continued. "Those are things that a lot of inmates in prison go through when they're not part of a gang structure and they come in and they're basically lone wolves, they just have to be by themselves."
Prison can be hard, and there's a lot of suffering in person," Menéndez said. "I'm not gonna fight back, I'm not going to engage, and I had no one really to turn to for help, and I was separated from Lyle."
The two brothers were initially housed in separate prisons, but in 2018, Lyle was transferred to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility where his brother had been serving since 2013.
"I remember the day that I was told 'Lyle just got assaulted and got his jaw broken.' I'm thinking 'He's over there, I'm going through this over here, and at least we could protect each other maybe if we were together,' but we were not even allowed to be together. So it was difficult," Menéndez said. "It took years to work out of it, because you have to find yourself in prison.
The Menéndez brothers have been back in the spotlight lately as they were the subjects of the hit Netflix drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story from creator Ryan Murphy.
The two brothers were 18 and 21 when they shot and killed their parents after what they allege was decades of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at their hands.
In the TV series, the brothers' relationship was presented as so close that they kissed on the mouth, stuck each other's fingers in the other's mouth, and did other homoerotic things. There's no evidence the real-life brothers had a sexual relationship at all.
In a statement through a TikTok account appearing to belong to his wife, Tammi, Erik said of the show, "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. I can only believe they were done so on purpose. 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 brothers also seemed to be on the verge of being released from prison last year due to then-L.A. District Attorney George Gascón filed a resentencing request. However, Gascón lost his election to Nathan Hochman, who has not publicly said if he will follow in his predecessor's path.
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Refinery29
40 minutes ago
- Refinery29
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