Former Menudo Member Says He Was Raped by Father of the Menendez Brothers

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Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of the 1989 murder of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menendez, in 1996.

 

 

Teen pop group Menudo (L-R: Ricky Martin, Charlie Rivera, Roy Rossello (center), Robby Rosa, and Ray Acevedo) posing in a hallway at the Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, California, in 1985.

 

 

 

Roy Rosselló, a former member of the iconic 1980s boy band Menudo, has claimed that he was drugged and raped by the late father of Erik and Lyle Menendez in a forthcoming Peacock docuseries.

Erik and Lyle, known as the Menendez brothers, were convicted of the 1989 murder of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, at the family’s Beverly Hills Mansion. Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18 at the time of the killings, in which Jose was shot in the head while Kitty died from 15 gunshot wounds.
The siblings claimed that they shot their parents self-defense, after years of sexual abuse from their father, who was the then-head of RCA Records, the label that signed Menudo. A judge deemed the defense inadmissible, citing irrelevance, and in 1996, the Menendez brothers were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In a snippet shared by Today on Tuesday (April 18) from the upcoming docuseries titled Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, Rosselló accuses Jose of sexual assault, noting that he was drugged and raped by the executive as a teenager.

“That’s the man here that raped me,” the now-51-year-old alleges, pointing to a photo of Jose. “That’s the pedophile.”

“I know what he did to me in his house,” he added, claiming that the band’s manager and creator Edgardo Diaz also sexually abused him, and was the person who took him to Menendez’s home, where he was subsequently drugged and raped.

The clip also features a phone conversation with Erik Menendez, who is serving his sentence with his brother at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. “It’s sad to know that there was another victim of my father,” Erik is heard saying on the phone. “I always hoped and believed that one day the truth about my dad would come out, but I never wished for it to come out like this – the result of trauma that another child has suffered.”

Watch the Today clip below. Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed premieres May 2 on Peacock.