0:12 - Introduction to the Menendez Case
12:58 - Unbelievable Evidence Revealed
16:00 - The Role of Family Dynamics
34:00 - The Complexity of Abuse and Fear
52:42 - The Importance of Sympathy and Support
This episode delves deep into the notorious case of Eric and Lyle Menendez, two brothers infamously known for the brutal murder of their parents over three decades ago. An exploration of the psychological and social dynamics surrounding their case, we discuss the vastly complex implications of their actions, spurred by a hushed history of severe abuse. The narrative unfolds like a psychological thriller—drawing upon harrowing evidence that remained obscured during the initial trials, including chilling details of the brothers’ traumatic upbringing marked by physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their father, Jose Menendez.
A significant point of discussion centers on the artistic and creative choices presented within the documentary surrounding this case. One pivotal scene features an unbroken, lingering camera shot focused on the younger brother as he recounts the sexual abuse he endured. This striking decision accentuates the raw intensity of his confession, compelling the audience to confront the unfiltered reality of his trauma without cuts or distractions. Such artistic expressions elevate the narrative by starkly juxtaposing the horrific details against its presentation, forcing a collective psychological reckoning that society often shies away from.
Evidence excluded from the second trial is meticulously analyzed, addressing how this omission skewed public perception and judicial outcomes. The recollections from various witnesses draw a harrowing picture of an environment riddled with fear and systemic failure—considering how their father's wealth and social standing shielded him from scrutiny. The discussion includes painful accounts of the boys' cries for help that went unanswered and the chilling fear they faced even when seeking outside assistance, revealing a society that often turns a blind eye to the most sinister forms of abuse.
Throughout the episode, we grapple with moral implications surrounding the brothers' defense of imperfect self-defense. By probing deeper into their psychological state, we examine how the memories of repressed trauma impact their actions. The conversation navigates through societal complicity, reflecting on why the Menendez brothers felt utterly isolated in their suffering, seemingly abandoned by the very frameworks that should have protected them. In a world where the abuser's voice often overshadows the victim's, this narrative serves as a plea for empathy and understanding—highlighting that the cycle of trauma can perpetuate for generations if left unaddressed.
The episode culminates in asking tough questions about the nature of forgiveness. We discuss the societal tendency to either vilify victims of abuse or to dismiss their pain outright. The systemic failures in recognizing and responding to child abuse are underscored, sparking a larger conversation about how society can better foster healing and prevent such tragedies from recurring. As we navigate the complexities of human suffering and resilience, this episode poignantly champions the need for genuine support systems to address the scars borne by survivors—fostering a more compassionate understanding of trauma and its far-reaching consequences.
[0:00] Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom A. This is a donor-only show which is updated evidence on the Eric and Lyle Menendez case.
[0:13] So, I'm going to assume that you know a little bit about it. Of course, this was the murders of the parents by two brothers back in the day, like 35 years ago. And, of course, at the time it was just like the preppy good-looking murderers and everybody made fun of them and so on. The stream is absolutely wild. Let me tell you how wild this is, how amazing this is, just from an artistic standpoint.
[0:46] So there's one entire episode of this documentary, which is one shot, and like a creepingly slow move-in, which is when the younger brother is talking about the sexual abuse that he experienced. It's incredible, an unbelievable choice. My dinner with Andre is like something that had just conversation, but it is, what is it, 25, 30 minutes or something of just the camera slowly zooming in. You can't even see the lawyer who's questioning him because you just see the back of her sort of waterfall of curly blonde hair, and it just slowly zooms in, and the acting is incredible. Absolutely amazing. And it's so hard to explain just what a powerful artistic and social decision that is, to not have cuts, to simply have the actor doing basically a monologue for almost half an hour with no cuts. And nothing changing in the background, and he's just in prison, and he's just talking about what happened. That is absolutely incroyable.
[2:01] So, the boy's defense, imperfect self-defense, based upon a history of sexual abuse. Now, I did not know all of the details of the sexual abuse. I've read a book, I've watched the documentary, I've watched the miniseries, I've looked at other videos and researched other things, because apparently I'm just becoming a true crime guy. So we're going to talk about some of the evidence that was largely excluded from the second trial, but was included in the first trial, And it also is amazing because, again, according to all reports in the first trial, the men wanted the death penalty and the women had sympathy. So just remember this. Because I want to talk about... What is some of the evidence for the sexual abuse?
[2:59] So, photos of the children's genitals, photos of the two boys' genitals were entered into evidence, and they were in an envelope with the mother's handwriting on regarding a birthday. And I won't get into all the details, you can look this up, but they did not take the photos themselves, and they did not take the photos of each other. So there were photos of the children's genitals and their naked bodies without their heads even on it. And that's not good or right or healthy or normal or anything like that. There are medical records. medical records of various injuries, including a fairly significant injury to the rear of Eric Menendez's throat, which would be consistent with oral assault. Again, does it prove?
[4:07] Circumstantial is important. Circumstantial is relevant. it. There's an unsutured scar on the lower lip. They said a dog bit him in the face, but this would also be consistent with what had happened, a laceration to his right eyebrow. And also, I mean, the degree of torture is almost beyond belief. I mean, I've seen a lot of immorality and evil, straight evil, in my life. And I've heard, of course, a lot of straight evil in call-in shows, this is absolutely staggering. I mean, the father would push thumbtacks into the child's skin. The father would cut the child during these savage, I would say bestial, but that's an insult to beasts who don't do that. This absolutely monstrous attacks. and the younger boy had a long scar on his leg that is consistent with saying that he was cut by his father during these sexual assaults. And sometimes these sexual assaults weren't even about sex anymore. It was just straight up physical torture.
[5:23] The father would stick needles or tacks into the thighs and... And he said that even there wasn't sex at some point, he would just put a towel under the boy's legs and cut the thighs with the knife. And he still has a scar from that. Other evidence. When the younger was 10 years old and the elder was 12, and they've talked about the sexual abuse, they talked about it with other children. Even younger, Eric would refer to himself as a child, as the hurt man. As the hurt man.
[6:22] Now, there was somebody who said, I lived with them, this is I think a relative, who says, I lived with them for over a year. I couldn't take it anymore, so I wish I'd never lived with them, because I wouldn't have known the behind-the-door scenario was going on in that house. My bedroom was downstairs. There were two single beds, and Lyle came downstairs one night, and it was before bedtime, and he wanted to sleep in the other bed, and he said that he was afraid that his dad was going to come into his room, and that his dad had been touching him sort of down there and so on. He indicated his groin area. So he went to go and tell the mother and told all about that and, he says and nothing happened of course he said when I first went to stay with them the two boys and Jose would go into the master bedroom and the door would close, and he said we'd taken the boys for a shower strange right old enough to take their own bus and their own showers.
[7:16] And so he's in the father is in with one or both of the boys I suppose with the showers and And the guy who's living there hears a scream. And he got up to go down the hall to see if everyone was all right. And at that point, Kitty yelled out, you're not going down there. Get back here. So as soon as Jose took either one of the boys into their room, the door was locked behind him. And Kitty made it very clear that you did not want to go. You did not go down the hallway to listen or go near the door.
[7:54] I was not allowed to see the boys right after they came out of that bedroom. And crazy.
[8:07] So this is when the kids are young. So another time, the father, Jose, told his guests he brought back a VHS tape from a trip to Brazil. He says, I have to show you guys this because it's so unique. and he puts it in and the film showed adults engaging in sexual acts in front of children and his guests got very uncomfortable some people said a few seconds some people said a few minutes and they got up and and left and apparently the father according to the witnesses at the dinner party the father found this horrifying movie hysterically funny and kept kept laughing, the um the mother according to reports suffered from a chemical dependency was on the maximum dosage of xanax and another drug and when the kids were young they talked about it when they were in their early teens they talked about it in their mid-teens and later teens they I talked about it with a wide variety of people. And a new letter has come out from, I think someone died in their papers, was a letter from one of the boys before the murders.
[9:33] That talked about the sexual abuse. So unless they've been planning their murders from when they were in the mid to late single digits, it's really hard to imagine that this was not something that was occurring.
[9:52] So, did the boys ever say any of the memories were repressed? No, not to my knowledge. Of course, the big question was people say, well, why didn't they talk about it with their therapists?
[10:07] Well, I mean, if you've talked to therapists over the years or read reports from therapists, I've read a number of therapists' reports that say that they've been in therapy. Kids have been, or young people, or even middle-aged people have been in therapy for years before talking about sexual abuse. This was evidence exposed in the second trial, but not the first. exposed. I'm not sure what you mean. No, a lot of the evidence here that I'm talking about, with the exception of the new letter that was found recently, was shown in the first trial, where the men all wanted the death penalty, even after hearing all of this, and the women had sympathy for the boys. A lot of this was talked about in the first trial, but suppressed in the second trial. It sounds like their mother is involved in her husband's vile acts. Well, the mother would check the penises for blisters because she thought her son might be gay and was concerned or worried about AIDS. Of course, as I mentioned before, the mother threatened to poison the family, I think, on more than one occasion, and the children were terrified of that. And, you know, one of the concerns that they had is, well, we could just run away. And it's like, but my father is very wealthy, very powerful, has lots of contacts. where are we going to go that we're going to be out of his um out of his reach that he can't uh.
[11:37] And the other thing that has come up, which I touched on last time, was, and I just want to make sure it's the right guy. So, that's right. So, this just came out relatively recently. I think it's in an affidavit form now, which does, I think, put you under penalty perjury in someone. But there is a boy, a man now, of course, who said that he was in Menudo, and of course, in Menudo, when your voice breaks or you turn 16, you're kicked out and copy-pasted with somebody else, and he said that he was given a big glass of wine by Jose Menendez. Jose Menendez said that it's a very expensive wine, you have to drink up, and he was drugged, and then he was, he woke up with massive amounts of damage to his anus and sphincter, and like, bled, and could barely walk for a week, and so on.
[12:58] The the therapist is almost beyond belief in terms of what what he was doing the therapist is almost almost beyond belief with uh what he was doing, so there are also and i think this happened by accident i think this happened by accident but uh my understanding is that.
[13:30] The um the father's sisters right so jose menendez's sisters uh came came up for the trial and happened to be talking with some of the psychological experts and they said who has who had control over Jose when he was younger, because the person who abuses is usually the person who has control over the child. And they said, oh, yes, well, our mother did. And the mother, according to these women, Jose Menendez is the alleged abuser, the mother never said no to him, thought he was wonderful and perfect at everything, and also continually played with his penis when he was a toddler and into his early latency period. And they would bring the boy and put the boy in bed with the mother. Then everybody would go to school and the mother would be alone with the child. Then there's a very powerful scene in the documentary that references this.
[14:32] They also believe the mother, okay, this goes way back, right? So, Jose Menendez's mother was also raised in a house with 12 uncles, and the children of the mother, the sisters of Jose Menendez, believed that their mother was sexually abused or molested by the uncle, one of the uncles, at least one of the uncles in the house with 12 uncles where she grew up, where he was an alcoholic and so on, right? So you can see this going down, this going down. If this is all true, again, it's all unprovable, but this is people's memories and so on, right? But if this is the case, then you see this pattern, right? The mother was molested. She molested, according to the reports, Jose Menendez. Jose Menendez allegedly sexually assaulted and molested and tortured his children. And then the elder brother of the elder son of Jose Menendez sexually tortured his younger brother. And this is, that's not even an allegation because this was confessed to, right? That the elder brother would take the younger brother out to the woods and I believe insert objects into the younger brother's rectum. And he confessed to this and apologized for it during the trial.
[15:57] During the trial.
[16:01] The boys say that Kitty, the mother, also asked them, was naked a lot and wanted to be admired for her physique and all of that sort of stuff.
[16:20] So, um, I wanted to bring up this evidence and maybe the evidence will have something to do with maybe getting, so there's a couple of things that could happen. Again, I'm no lawyer. This is just sort of my amateur understanding of all of this, but a couple of things could, could happen with regards to these boys. I mean, I personally think they should not have been charged with first-degree. My, again, subjective, obviously nonsense opinion is in no way, shape, or form, should they have been charged with first-degree premeditated lying-in-wait murder. Now, what could happen now, I suppose the sentence is because it will always be vacated, but it could be that their conviction gets downgraded to manslaughter, and they are released based on time served, because manslaughter, again, I've heard estimates from 8 to 22 years, but it would be, of course, far less than the 35 years that they've served, so they would get out in their 50s.
[17:37] So, I'm obviously happy to take your questions. I do have some thoughts about this as a whole.
[17:51] But the feeling of desperation comes from what? The feeling of desperation comes from what? Because I believe that the boys felt that they were in a state of nature. That there was no authority that could help them. Now, why did they believe that there was no authority that could help them? Because the father had viciously abused them in public.
[18:23] The father had beaten a pet to death. The father had, according to them, you know, raped, assaulted, tortured, you name it, in a house full of people in an extended family. This isn't a guy alone out in a farm in the middle of nowhere. This is a guy who moves in the highest circles of society. This is a guy who has tens or, you know, 14 million or various estimates and so on. Oh, and by the by, there does seem to be significant evidence that the boys believed or the boys claimed or the boys said, and I think that this was also said to others, that they were out of the will, right? That they'd been taken out of the will because they'd been involved in some criminal activity and other things that the boy had been one of the, I think the elders got kicked out of Princeton for plagiarism, at least for a year. And so they were out of the will and so the idea that they murdered for money is not a very compelling motive.
[19:26] So it's just really really important to understand for me, that people have verified that the boys kept telling everyone around them about being tortured and molested.
[19:48] And nothing nothing was done nobody came to save nobody called nobody figured it out nobody took them in nobody got them help nobody stood up for them and look we most of us know this intimately and deeply right, and then what, And then what? The reality that these boys experienced deeply, vividly, powerfully, empirically, is that you can't stop anyone from raping children. Nobody can stop anyone from raping children.
[20:43] And, of course, the youngest, Lyle, was hoping to get away, right? So he was hoping to get away and go to school away from home. And then the father, who, according to the son, was still molesting and assaulting and torturing the boy, the young man, the father said, you can't go. You're going to have to spend the majority of your week here so I can keep an eye on you. Wink, wink, right? So the oldest boy was out, the youngest boy was home, the oldest boy had said, I'm going to protect the youngest boy, the youngest man. And so you can hold on if you believe you can get out.
[21:34] But people say, well, why didn't they just leave? Okay, so if you've not had like a truly evil, powerful person stalking you, it's probably a little tough to understand. Right so let's say that the boys had moved out but they'd already said they were going to tell right so then what i mean a man who's capable of this in their eyes is capable of anything right it's capable of anything and they the day of the day before the murders, they went on a fishing trip they were supposed to fish fish for sharks the fishing trip was supposed to be in the morning but it was moved until later which seemed suspicious and the boys were afraid that they were going to get killed, um, out there and just their bodies were going to be dumped. It turned out that the other people on the boat, again, I don't know how they do it with the captain. So, but you know, when you're in a, um, a fight or flight mechanism, then you either perceive things very, very badly, or you perceive things really accurately that no one else can see.
[22:48] So, let's say that they had left, right? And let's say they had left after having already said to their father and their mother that they are going to expose them. Then what? Would they be afraid that their father could get them committed? I mean, the mother was, I assume, going to therapy, and the family had gone to therapy, and I think the therapy for the boys, I think, had been court-ordered after they were involved in a string of break-ins. So, can the mental health profession help them? No. Everyone's already gone to therapy. And the mother does not appear to be getting help, but rather appears to be getting drugged. To the boys, right?
[23:41] So would they be concerned that the father might get them institutionalized by calling them insane? They believed that their father, so in the VHS business and in the music business, sorry, not the VHS business, in the, no, I think in the VHS business, but in the music business and so on, there does seem to be some ties to organized crime, because of course the initial story that the boys put forward was that they believed that there was a mob hit, right? But the mob would not be that messy in general, and the mob would not take out the wife.
[24:19] So, if they believed that their father had run afoul of the mob, then it meant that their father had some involvement with the mob, or had some contact with the mob, or had some dealings or engagement with the mob, right? And if you have a totally psychopathic $14 million guy who's out for your blood, what can you do? And you have no money. He's cut you off, right? You've got no money. Cuts off all the credit cards. You've got no money. So get a job. Get a job. Okay, so you get a job. And your father finds out because he's got you followed. And then the father phones the people and say, oh, by the way, they're thieves. They were convicted of breaking into houses and so on, right? So then you get fired. So then what? Where do you go? What do you do? They don't view society as able to help them at all. In fact, society seems to be colluding with the abusers. Do you know that when the boys went to jail, at least one of them said it was kind of a relief? It was relatively safe in jail.
[25:45] So, to me, and look, I'm not justifying the murders, of course, right? But I'm just trying to say it is important to understand whether this is a witness protection could have helped. Okay, so let's say that witness protection could have helped. And that's a great point. So, let's play that out. Okay, how do you get witness protection? But you don't get witness protection because you've made an accusation for which there's no direct physical proof right i mean there's a lot of my guess the photos are evidence the photos of the boy's genitals are evidence and the aggregate of medical history is evidence but and then other people's hearsay but nobody witnessed it that's the whole point right you don't abuse people like that or children like that and have people witness it so there's a lot of circumstantial stuff, and then you have a guy, Jose Menendez, who has access to the best lawyers, can spend all the money that he wants, can sue you for defamation, can, you know, what do you do? What do you do? So I don't know if witness protection kicks in. If, I mean, witness protection, again, I'm no expert, but I think witness protection generally kicks in when the police are certain that, say, the mob has committed some crime and you're the witness and they need your testimony, but they're not certain that anything happened.
[27:13] So it's easy for people to say, leave. And I get that. And, of course, that is the magic wand, where people say, leave. And I'm not trying—of course, they could leave. Technically, they could leave. They could leave. They could go under the radar. They could work under the table. They could just go and try and start something. But I don't think if you make an accusation—and people, like— So, I'm getting into old fart territory. I'm aware. I'm aware. 60, I still read somebody's 58, like, damn, that's old. Damn, that's me. So, I'm getting, I'm ascending to old fartdom, right? No question. Now, so you, y'all don't know. Okay, give me your decades here. Just, you know, the rich little kids and so on. Like, the poor little rich girl is kind of a cliche, right? Because oftentimes wealth makes dysfunction worse, right? This is something that people don't generally understand because all they look is at toys and stuff. Wealth makes dysfunction worse because at least if you're broke, everything matches up.
[28:28] James, I know how old you are. To the minute, I've got my countdown. Actually, count up, not countdown. That sounds a bit more sinister. You know, like that meme when you get the clock from Tehran and it says 10 o'clock and then it goes to 959. Catheter Club, it's the 20s. Okay, so for the people who are older, for the people who are older, now we can talk about the sexual abuse as a whole. We can talk about the sexual abuse of men.
[28:57] So I'm 58. And when I started talking about child abuse in my mid-teens, right? We're talking 1980, 1981. It's like a decade, more than a decade before this entire trial. So do you understand like what I was dealing with when it came to talking about child abuse in my mid to late teens? Now just now with tiktok and the interest in this trial now it's starting to be talked about a little bit the cracks are showing uh the the compassion for men now it's tough enough with this kind of horrendous father to son although the mother seems to be hinted at but we are still not in the place where, you know, the number of female predatory teachers that are popping up in the world is absolutely staggering. Absolutely staggering.
[30:03] I mean, in a lot of ways, the obesity epidemic would mirror the sexual abuse increase as a result of single mothers, right? As a result of single mothers, which I've been talking about for like 15 years. Well, longer than that, but publicly.
[30:21] I mean, I see all the mental health disorders that are occurring in the younger generations. I assume that this is just, you know, I talked about this in Peaceful Parenting, that the average pedophile has like 200 victims. It's the average one, right? So, this is not, this is conversation that society is only starting to have. We've done our part here and I can appreciate your support for that and of course tips are always welcome but, and there could be even darker stuff to come out as well, that maybe the boys were passed around. That's shockingly not as rare as, well, we'd want none of it whatsoever, but it's not as rare as you might think that children are passed around in a network, broken and passed around.
[31:17] But the conversation about this, it was too, I think it was too, shocking uncomfortable and appalling because remember one and this is just reported right or estimates uh one in three girls one in five boys so we will finally start to have this conversation in a deep and meaningful way in in as wide a scope as it needs to be because i'm telling you, man, some 14-year-old is going to strangle his teacher, and his female teacher, right, for sexual abuse. And that is when the conversation is really going to break out. The internet, by facilitating these kinds of conversations, is peeling back the layers of how children are hurt in society. And at some point, of course, we don't want any of this to happen, but it's going to happen. At some point, some 13 or 14 or 15-year-old kid is going to kill a female teacher who's preying on him. That's going to be very tough for society.
[32:41] And of course you know i'm not nobody wants these extrajudicial killings, but i i mean if if i don't know i don't know what would what what would the penalty be uh if all of the allegations against jose menendez were true if all of the allegations were true, what would the penalty be? Well, it's not murder. Soul murder, maybe, but not murder. What would the... Or if, let's say, that because it was Lyle who was still being abused, the abuse for Eric happened for a couple of years when he was in the single digits, but for Lyle the abuse kept occurring, which is probably why the father didn't want to let him go and if the, if Lyle had killed his father while his father was assaulting him would that not be self-defense?
[34:01] But, you know, it's hard to, I guess, what's this, that's the early 90s, so you wouldn't even really have, well, no, they had recording devices, of course, not as convenient as cell phones and so on, right? But if Lyle had killed his father while his father was in the process of molesting or raping him. I see that, but the jury, you know, this is the problem, if the jury would have said, well, you should have just fought him off, you're bigger. Stronger, you're younger, you're healthy, like this kid was an athlete, right? Strong, worked out, I think. Well, I mean, they all look pretty buff. Steve Reeves' movie-style buff in the documentary, sorry, in the recreation, the docudrama, right? Well, but the pictures were just of the genitals, and I don't know that that counts. I'm no expert, right? I don't know that that counts.
[35:14] But now, like, it's hard to know. Again if you if you talked about child abuse not necessarily this type of abuse but if you talked about child abuse in the 70s and 80s people didn't even know what you were talking about really i mean you still i posted this video yesterday of the child being, fairly viciously slapped by a uh out of control father, you know people and even now people are like yep i wish my my dad whipped my ass and it made me a better person and should be more and kids need discipline right so but but and this is now right i'm talking 40 years ago 40 years ago when i well more than 40 years ago but let's just say 40 years ago for a nice round number so 40 years ago when i started talking about child abuse, it was incomprehensible to people i didn't know what i was talking about.
[36:18] And so this was, I mean, the boys are a little younger than me, not a half a decade, I mean, they're two years apart, right? Three years apart. So, the boys were a little younger than me, so for them to try to get sympathy and understanding for what they were going through, because here's the thing too, so remember, most jurors are older on average, and again, I don't know how much they recreated the jury, but the jury was old farts as a whole so let's say that the jurors in their 50s and you're being tried and you're 19 it's meant the juror is a generation even further back so it was insane enough to try and have these conversations and and you could see this with all of the saturday night life skits with john malkovich and mike myers and uh and others um you could see just how little to no space and mockery, hostility, skepticism, scorn, and complete and utter lack of sympathy. And that's from fairly young comedians. Go one generation further back.
[37:40] Oh my gosh. How are you going to get protection and justice?
[37:53] Well i mean in the past people were either victims or perpetrators of child abuse and most were both, i mean just about everyone really i mean this is a lloyd de mosse argument that you know prior to sort of the modern era which you know can vary but it's relatively recent all parenting was child abuse like there was no who was not there's nothing that was not child abuse in terms of parenting, Right, so if you're trying to get a trial in 1990 from a 50-year-old, right, you're talking about somebody who was raised during the Second World War. Well, good luck with that. Good luck with that.
[38:38] Good luck with that. So where were they going to go? Wherever they went their father would follow them and they believed that their father had mob connections or the mob was on his radar, or had mob contact again I'm not saying that he was in the mob I'm not saying that he was like meeting with the mob but the first thing they said when they were dead was mob hit which means he's stepped on some mobster's toes he's had some contact with the mob and so he's very wealthy and he's absolutely committed, to evil and And he is absolutely not going to let this come out, right? The father is like, the father has political ambitions. He wanted the Menendezes to become like the Kennedys. So the father has significant political ambitions. So he's not going to let this come out. So he will do anything to prevent. And so for the boys, it's like, it's sort of like, this is an analogy, right? So let's say that you annoy some mob guy who can easily hire hitmen, and the mob guy says, you're dead, right?
[39:59] And you know that the mob guy can hire hitmen. And what are you going to do? You can't wait to die. So, I mean, this is legal gray area, moral gray area. But if somebody who can hire hit men and has a history of that, to your knowledge, says you're dead, then can you kill him? Say, well, he wasn't threatening you. There was no immediate. Like, he didn't have a knife out. He wasn't aiming at you, right? There was no immediate, but he just promised. He just promised that you were going to die. Or if you grew up in a mob family and your father said if you ever tell outsiders about the family business i will kill you and your mother says if you ever cross me i will kill you and you grow up with a mob family and they say they will kill you if you talk about the crimes the family has committed.
[41:05] And then you decide that you are going to tell. You tell your parents that you're going to tell after they have told you your whole life that if you tell, they'll kill you. Then what? Then what? Verbal assault only needs to show the ability to carry it out, I believe, so threats are a crime.
[41:33] Yeah Marvin Gaye I was trying to think of that is it Marvin Marvin Gaye's dad killed him right, and I believe that was uh based upon Marvin Gaye going to talk about something the dad didn't want to be talked about right so threats are a crime okay but what if you're not recorded right like here's the other thing too and and again no I'm not trying to diss the police as a hole because they're a pretty good band but let's let's talk about this right so let's say that lyle menendez sorry um eric and lyle menendez decide to go to the police right and and they're talking about a big complicated set of crimes going back decades for which there's no direct physical evidence knowing that their mother will lie and they're gonna go and sit down and talk to a guy, because, you know, they would assign you to a senior detective, because, you know, Jose Menendez is like a big swinging dick, right? I mean, he's a very powerful man, he's well-connected, he knows everyone, he's fantastically wealthy, and so if you are going to, as these two boys, go and accuse your father of this, you're going to go and talk to some detectives who's like 60.
[43:02] No, you need to look at, go look up why Marvin Gaye's dad killed him.
[43:22] So, yeah, I know the story, but I'm not going to, right, I won't go into it now. But you go look into exactly what was going on in that household. And the detective could be on your dad's payroll well so the father donated money everywhere too right i mean i don't know that the father donated money to the police force but if uh if there was an evil guy and obviously jose menendez was very smart so i would assume that since jose menendez was breaking the law according to his sons then he would absolutely have donated a huge amount of money to the police force. I mean, he got, arguably, he got some preferential treatment from schools where his kids misbehaved because he donated to the schools and so on, right? So the boys you know when you are abused, then you.
[44:37] You get a very strong sense of where society is and who is going to possibly be available to help you. You get a very, very strong sense of this, right? So the boys had, by the time they were in their late teens, early 20s, just sort of average it out, they'd had 15 years of trying to tell people who claimed to love them, about the sickening, horrendous, tortuous abuse they were going through, right? They had told, I mean, I don't know exactly how many people we told, they told, and, we'll probably, I mean, we'll never know, of course, because some of them have died, but we don't know how many people they told. But we know that it was a lot already. I mean, according to reports, right?
[45:29] They know that their father had, you know, one of the first scenes you see with the dad who Javier Barden is a terrifying actor and very good. That wolfish smile that comes straight out of no country for old men but you know he's he's screaming at his son he's verbally abusing him he's calling him names and, no one says anything no one does anything, so they can be abused and it's just verbal abuse and you know physical roughhousing or whatever but that can all happen in public and no one says anything their coaches see it um they're doing exhibition tennis matches where there's a hundred or two hundred people in the audience. Everybody sees it. Nobody does anything.
[46:15] So this is an old, I mentioned this before, but there's an old skit from Monty Python where a criminal gets arrested. He's like, well, it's a fair cut, but society's to blame. Agreed. We'll be charging them too. Society's to blame. Agreed. We'll be charging them to. Okay? Who put the boys in a corner? You don't just end up in a corner where you feel there's no way out. How did, step by step, dominoes, right? How did the boys end up facing these demons with no social support?
[47:11] How did that happen right how did it happen well it happened step by step it happened bit by bit it happened every single day it happened that they moved through society that didn't do anything and here's another thing to remember this is a tough thing see my mother was not considered a success by almost anyone, right? I mean, she had pretty low rent secretarial jobs. Actually, no one was high rent, but she had fairly low rent secretarial jobs. And then she was unemployed for, I don't know, the last 45 years or whatever, right? But.
[47:51] So nobody looked at my mom and thought, wow, she's successful. And even then I got barely any sympathy. No, in fact, I got no sympathy that I can recall, even though people I knew at the time directly witnessed my mother's behavior. I had no sympathy, no support. So I want you to think what it's like when your father is a colossus who seems to run just about everything in society, right? Rand Hertz worked for a record company, very high level, accumulated, you know, $14 million and a big man on campus and big social gatherings and everyone, you know, how many of the people he showed this vile movie he got in Brazil from came back?
[48:42] Your sound is peaking. I haven't changed anything. So
[48:55] Yeah i'm sorry this computer for some reason i can't run the microphone through the thing which is supposed i have to use this second microphone which never worked but uh you can listen after so how are they supposed to view society that elevates their father to positions of staggering levels of power and authority.
[49:26] Society refused to criticize my mother, but at least it didn't praise her. You know, in one of the big ironies, of course, the boys had met O.J. Simpson because their father hired O.J. Simpsons for Hertz Rent-A-Car ads, and then one of the boys was in prison with O.J. Simpson, right? But so how are they supposed to view society that gives their a vilely abusive father massive amounts of money status power prestige.
[49:59] This is who society says is worth 14 million dollars this is who society says should run boy bands and giant rental companies and music studios and like this is the guy everyone comes over everybody wants favors from everybody wants a job from he's big swinging dick big man on campus. He is elevated and praised almost beyond words. When you live in a society that not only can't see how evil your father is, but gives him tens of millions of dollars, because the net worth was 14 million, I think, at the end, which is, you know, a lot of money no matter what, but back in the late 80s, 90s, probably double, right? So, their father was staggeringly wealthy, staggeringly respected, staggeringly powerful. Are they supposed to go to the society that praises and rewards their father in ways that are probably one in 100,000 people, and then say, no, you're all completely wrong?
[51:14] The society that fails to detect these predators, the society that fails to act upon these predators, the society that fails to stand up for children puts children in this kind of corner. And I'm talking about moral responsibility. I'm not talking about legal responsibility, but I'm talking about moral responsibility. Somebody says, hey Stef, I'm wondering theoretically, if the two boys became deeply Christian or moral, would they have found another way? If the two, yes, yes, for sure. But, all due respect to Christianity, they would have forgiven, but not dealt with the issues. and therefore it would have been likely that they would repeat. Likely, not certain, but likely that they would repeat. I mean, they probably aren't going to go anywhere to do with therapy after their experience with family therapy as a whole.
[52:43] So this is why you know i keep putting the call out there and i'll keep doing this until the day i die, that if somebody is talking about child abuse please please listen give them sympathy give them responsibility as adults because you don't want the childhood to dwarf their free will as adults but please please give them some sympathy give them some help give them a hug give them some compassion and ask people as well you know if somebody is is difficult or unpleasant and i'm not saying you know become some sort of nerd herder but i'm just saying that that ask people in your life and.
[53:26] The more we listen to victims of abuse, the less we end up with situations like this. Somebody says, as a Catholic, I'm not forgiven until I confess. I'm taking the same position to everyone else now. Yeah. I, you know, I can't imagine what it would be like to think that you know better than God what is good. That's demonic. Not you, right? But people who say, well, I forgive no matter what. God does not forgive non-repentant sins nor does expect us to go to a non-repentant person and forgive them. Murder and rape are capital crimes to God and he will not even forgive a repentant murderer or rapist until his trial on the other side. Possibly capital punishment is not murder.
[54:11] Forgiving a non-repentant person is enabling sin. Yeah, you don't reward people, who haven't earned forgiveness with forgiveness because that's an insult to everyone who earns it. Right? It's like giving everyone who shows up to the super bowl, the victory in the super bowl what does that mean to all the people who earn it just means as soon as you give forgiveness to people who haven't earned it you're simply telling people to never have repentance yes you'll reward them either way right if you have a job that's difficult, like if you if you had a magic pill that could just make you ripped and and you know 15 body fat or whatever and abs and like just one pill, why would you go to the gym, right?
[54:57] Hmm, yeah, you could be right, Cheddar Man, you could be right. All right, any other questions or comments? But yeah, just this is why the mission to me has always been so important, is that I wish to prevent just these kinds of escalations. I can't, I have not, and again, I've been looking at this for three or four days, so I'm not an expert about this. But I have not found one instance except after, right? I think the lawyer was sympathetic, and she's played very well. Very well. The actress, I mean, all of the acting in the docudrama is staggeringly good, except that the therapist should have been even more slimy. But anyway, Anyway, but prior to the murder, there was no soft place for them to land and no sympathetic shoulder for them to lean on and no kindness for the suffering they'd gone through. And that's important. That's important. If they had received sympathy, that would have cracked their view that society was predatory. A society that worships, praises and rewards men like this is always going to be viewed as predatory. By the victims of abuse.
[56:22] So, wherever you can, give people sympathy. It's so important to break that cycle of the state of nature. And I do genuinely believe that if they had received real sympathy, it wouldn't have escalated in this kind of way. But people withhold sympathy, and then they're just shocked. Shocked, I tell you. How many of the male jurors who wanted the death penalty for these victims of appalling abuse, how many of them were abusers?
[56:56] We'll never know just how much. All right. I know it's not Christian, but empirically speaking, blanket forgiveness is the dominant teaching by contemporary Christians. No, it's just that this is a female perspective, right? Women are built for forgiveness because they're in charge of toddlers babies and toddlers right, so because they're in charge of babies and toddlers they have to forgive because you can't hold babies and toddlers morally responsible so right you have to forgive right, yeah that was a lot and and of course they also know the media they knew the media was going to do what they did right so all right well thanks everyone i'm going to keep this just under an hour freedom.com slash donate if you'd like to help out the show it is of course massively massively appreciated lots of love from up here and uh if you have suffered and you you've heard this and you have suffered freedom.com slash call it's a free call and we can talk about it and don't despair there are good people out here we may be like stars in the night sky but we are here and don't don't be alone and don't view the hellscape of the general human condition as any marker of what the soul of the world really is all right lots of love take care guys bye.
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