Whoopi Goldberg will have more cases reviewed if the Menendez Brothers are released

The hosts of The view weighed in on Lyle and Erik Menendez’s upcoming hearing, highlighting the increase in awareness of abuse over the past 35 years and questioning whether others in similar situations are getting the same attention.

“Not everyone is going to be lucky enough to get a Netflix special,” said Whoopi Goldberg. “I think it’s a conversation that’s just bigger than just the Menendez brothers.”

Goldberg continued, “There are hundreds of people on death row who aren’t there because no one 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 that decisions should lie with the court, not with the media or public opinion.

“This is something that shouldn’t be judged by the court of public opinion because we watched a Netflix series or we watched a documentary,” Navarro said. “I think the justice 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 more than 20 family members who came out and said they wanted this new evidence reconsidered.”

The brothers will appear in the Van Nuys courthouse Monday for a critical status hearing to determine whether their Dec. 11 parole will continue 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 sentences.

The brothers will appear practically at 10:30am PT / 1:30pm ET from the Richard J. Donovan Department of Corrections in San Diego.

Sexual abuse among men

Sunny Hostin said rape remains one of the most underreported crimes, especially among boys.

Research shows that at least one in six men experience sexual assault or abuse, regardless of whether they are 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 by boys and in a family, it’s minimal and that’s because how can you expect a child to come out to a mandatory reporter or to a parent when their entire existence depends on the person who abuses them?” Hostin said.

Sara Haines agreed, saying Lyle confided in her 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) continued to indicate to me by touching himself down there and saying that his father and him had touched 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 that was the last time she ever talked about what Lyle had told her until the day in court.

Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former Manhattan prosecutor and author of Credibletold Newsweek that boys who are victims of sexual assault and abuse face additional challenges because such cases are less common and often less recognized, and these difficulties were even greater decades ago.

“When victims don’t act or look the way we expect them to act or look, we tend to find them not believable, and boys don’t really fit into the popular understanding of who is a victim abuse,” the author said.

Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, vice president of communications at the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN, said Newsweek not being believed from the beginning can be one of the most damaging experiences for a survivor. The level of faith that victims receive shapes their entire journey, affecting their chances of obtaining legal justice.

Should the criminal justice system follow this approach?

Alyssa Farah Griffin said the criminal justice system should follow a three-pronged approach: punishment, crime deterrence and rehabilitation.

“I think people have shown that they could be rehabilitated,” Farah Griffin said. “They’ve served more than 30 years, they’ve admitted to the crime they committed. Nobody’s saying what they did is not 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 that, unfortunately, prison is not a place where a lot of people are being rehabilitated, but by all accounts they are,” Hostin said. “They’ve done the prison work on themselves. They’ve helped so many other inmates. They’ve received college degrees.”

While in prison, Lyle, 56, earned an associate’s 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 issues of inmate advisory councils with the prison population, USA today reported.

Erik, 53, earned an associate’s 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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