The hosts of The View weighed in on Lyle and Erik Menendez's upcoming hearing, highlighting the rise in abuse awareness over the past 35 years and questioning whether others in similar situations receive the same attention.
"Everybody's not going to be lucky enough to get a Netflix special," Whoopi Goldberg said. "I think it's a conversation that is just bigger than just the Menendez brothers."
Goldberg continued, "There are hundreds of people on death row who are there not because nobody wanted to hear their evidence. It's because the evidence wasn't presented, and some evidence was torn up and moved around."
Ana Navarro said decisions should rest with the court, not with the media or public opinion.
"This is something that should not be judged by the court of public opinion because we watched a Netflix series or we watched a documentary," Navarro said. "I think the legal system needs to do its job and reevaluate the new evidence or the evidence that wasn't seen. It meant a lot that there were 20-plus family members who came out and said they wanted this new evidence reevaluated."
The brothers will appear in the Van Nuys courthouse Monday for a critical status hearing to decide if their December 11 parole hearing will proceed or be delayed as incoming Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman reviews their case.
Nearly three decades ago, the court sentenced the pair to life without parole, and their lawyers—Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner—are now asking Judge Michael Jesic to reduce their sentence.
The brothers will appear virtually at 10:30 a.m. PT / 1:30 p.m. ET from Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
Sexual Abuse Among Men
Sunny Hostin said rape remains one of the most underreported crimes, especially among boys.
Research shows at least one in six men experience sexual abuse or assault, whether as children or adults. This number likely underestimates the true scale as many men never disclose their abuse due to societal stigma, fear or shame.
"Rape is the least reported crime in our country. When you talk about child rape and child rape of boys and in a family, it is minuscule, and that is because, how can you expect a child to come out to a mandatory reporter or to a parent when their entire existence is dependent on the person that is abusing them?" Hostin said.
Sara Haines agreed, stating that Lyle confided in his cousin about the ongoing abuse, who informed his mother, Kitty Menendez, but nothing was done. She added that individuals are often "punished as a result of that."
Diane Hernandez testified during their first trial that Lyle had confided in her about the abuse he endured in 1974.
"He [Lyle] proceeded to indicate to me by touching himself down there and saying that his dad and him had been touching each other down there," Hernandez said in the courtroom. "I went and got Kitty and brought her downstairs and told her what was going on. She didn't believe me."
Hernandez said she and Lyle never discussed it again, and it was the last time she ever spoke about what Lyle had told her until the day in court.
Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former Manhattan prosecutor and author of Credible, told Newsweek that boys who are victims of sexual abuse and assault face additional challenges because such cases are less common and often less acknowledged, with these difficulties being even greater decades ago.
"When victims don't behave or look like we expect them to behave or look, we tend to find them not credible and boys don't really fit into the popular understanding of who's a victim of abuse," the author said.
Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, vice president of communications at the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN, told Newsweek that not being believed from the beginning can be one of the most damaging experiences for a survivor. The level of belief victims receive shapes their entire journey, impacting their chances of achieving legal justice.
Should the Criminal Justice System Follow This Approach?
Alyssa Farah Griffin said the criminal justice system should follow a threefold approach: punishment, crime deterrence and rehabilitation.
"I think the people have shown that they could be rehabilitated," Farah Griffin said. "They've served more than 30 years, they've acknowledged the crime that they committed. No one is saying what they did isn't wrong. What they did is absolutely wrong. But I think there's a helplessness that speaks to what their experience was after years and years of being victimized and the system failing them, their own family members failing them."
"I think we know statistically, unfortunately, prison is not a place where many people get rehabilitated, but by all accounts, they have," Hostin said. "They have done the work in prison on themselves. They have helped so many other inmates. They have received college degrees."
While in prison, 56-year-old Lyle has earned an associate degree in sociology and a bachelor's degree from UC Irvine, and created four programs to help inmates. He also wrote the WIRE bulletin, which shared Inmate Advisory Council matters with the prison population, USA Today reported.
Erik, 53, earned an associate degree in sociology, was accepted to the University of California and completed a Certificate in American Sign Language from Southwestern College in 2022. He created five prison programs.
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