By now the Menendez trial should have changed everything. It didn’t.
Child abuse is distorted love. Sometimes it’s broken bones, but often it’s parents who say they care while eroding a child’s sense of safety and worth. The Menendez brothers are getting a sentencing review, and after 30 years of a life sentence they could be released from prison. But what’s really on review is our collective refusal to understand long-term abuse. The Menendez brothers are a cultural mirror: the more we understand their story, the more we must ask what we’ve normalized in our own homes.
We instinctively accept that love is what our parents give us.
I was in LA when the Menendez brothers were on trial for killing their parents in their Beverly Hills neighborhood. A few years before, when I was playing beach volleyball and had trouble paying rent, I went to a home in the same neighborhood to interview to be a companion to a fifty-year-old guy.
I rode my bike everywhere in LA because even though it was the 90s, Flashdance was fresh in my head, and I thought being sweaty would be fine. The guy opened the door and immediately said no. Before I could even ask him where to lock my bike.
A common question, even from me, is this: When I worked so hard to get away from my sexually abusive father, why did I interview for a job that would recreate that?
We tell ourselves abuse is not true or it’s not relevant
The truth is that I spent my entire childhood hearing that how my parents treated me was okay, and that they loved me. It took more than a decade away from those parents to reorganize everything in my head.
I remember hearing that the Menendez brothers killed their parents after decades of sex abuse. I heard that people didn’t believe the brothers. I also heard Erik used to give his dad cinnamon because it changed the taste of his dad’s sperm, but his dad got angry that all his food had cinnamon on it. That’s all I needed to hear to be certain they were telling the truth about abuse.
I didn’t think much about them again until the investors in Quistic had me run financials through Roger Smith. On a slow day, Roger told me he had been a character witness for the father at the Menendez trial.
“What did you say?”
“I said that Jose was a sadist to people we worked with.”
Even at that time, 20 years after the Menendez trial, I did not see how it applied to me. I mostly thought: Roger has grace under pressure. That will be good for raising more money.
We underestimate the confusion that emerges from chronic fear
Last year I watched a documentary of the case and discovered that the judge had ruled that battered woman syndrome could not be mentioned in court, because it only applied to women. So the defense had to educate the jury about how long-term abuse of a child has a similar crushing impact to long-term abuse of a woman.
Fifty people testified for the defense. Family and friends explained what life was like for the brothers, and professionals interpreted what happens to kids during long-term abuse. One juror said she felt like she earned a PhD in child abuse by the end of the trial. I feel the same way.
The idea that battered woman syndrome applies to abused children is revelatory to me. I am terrified of my mother. My brothers are incredulous when they hear me panic. They ask how I could get lost just blocks from my apartment when I’m with her. I didn’t see my situation clearly until I watched a gazillion hours of the Menendez case.
Why don’t we stop saying why don’t you just leave?
The defense had to show why the brothers would not just leave. Constant fear leads to constant confusion and then a feeling that leaving is impossible. By the time someone has suffered long-term abuse, it’s been so normalized that they don’t have the language to ask for help.
The closing arguments of Leslie Abramson should feel old-fashioned today. Like Clarence Darrow arguing for evolution. But really, not much has changed. This week Cassie Ventura is on the witness stand defending why she kept going to Diddy’s Freak-Offs. Virginia Giuffre just killed herself after working for decades to put her powerful male rapists in prison and failing. Christine Blasey Ford testified in Congress, and we still put her rapist on the Supreme Court.
When you ask someone why don’t they just leave, think about how difficult it has been for these women to feel heard. Now tell a woman without a big bank account or a stable job that she should just leave.
Motherly disinterest is abuse
In the closing arguments, Abramson said: “How does a child experience motherly disinterest? The message is that you don’t count. The message is, I don’t like you. I don’t love you. I’m bothered by you.”
First I thought: my mom did that with me. She worked while I was an infant. Then I thought, this happens all the time. And we deny this as a society, just like we denied that battered woman syndrome applies to men and children, not just women.
Abramson said, “This is the only mother he knew, so his attachment was an anxious attachment. He couldn’t predict when she’d be there for him.” We choose to ignore the impact of not being able to predict when a parent will be there for a child. We pretend that having a nanny is fine or splitting 50/50 is fine, even though we know that a kid needs a single primary caretaker from ages 0 – 3 in order to have secure attachment.
Just like in the 90s, we choose to not believe what is too confrontational to our current beliefs.
Still Explaining the Obvious
In the closing arguments of the second trial, Abramson was visibly frustrated. She honestly couldn’t believe that anyone could convict the brothers after hearing that their dad raped both of them when they were ages 6 – 10 and one brother until he was 18. She was almost screaming at some point, because she was so sick of trying to explain everything that is so obvious to her and to anyone who understands child abuse.
I feel that way. I feel like I can’t believe what we are still talking about when it comes to caretaking for an infant. I tell myself that it’s okay if everyone doesn’t understand what I’m saying. But I see Leslie Abramson at the end of the trial, and she is fighting for every kid who was ever abused. She wants to make the world a better place, and her urgency has shaken her.
This is how I feel. It’s so clear to me what we need to do. We need to see ourselves more clearly. We need to see our relationships more clearly.
The test is not, “Do your kids love you?” The attachment deficit is established early on. Children love their parents even if their parents don’t love them.
I read a lot about child abuse because it’s clear to me that I have normalized so much of my life that I need to be told over and over again what abuse is. I need to hear it a hundred different ways, because I have a hundred different ways to normalize it.
But I’m not alone. You’re right there with me. Because we do not understand abuse as a society, and we struggle to get past how much we’ve normalized.
Brilliant, thank you.
Timely as I just read articles about the pervasive sexual abuse of children by 59 priests in the Diocese of Scranton. Only two out of the 59 were held accountable because the statue of limitations had expired. I’ve often wondered why it feels like there is a dark pall hanging over Scranton. A lot of addiction and other coping behaviors designed to “check out” and not feel pain. i believe that the entire community of Scranton is suffering from unresolved community trauma.
As an aside, Dr. Gabor Mate has written a comprehensive book how culture contributes to generational family trauma.
That’s really sad about Scranton. I’m sure this is the case with a lot more Diocese than we know. And a lot more families. I read in the Atlantic that DNA testing has shown that 1 out of 7000 people is born from an incestuous relationship. We need to revolutionize the way we take care of each other.
Penelope
I learned as an adult that one of my aunts was the result of my grandmother being raped by her brother. Her parents claimed to not know who the father was and kicked her out as a pregnant teen. Her entire life she never told my aunt who her father was and finally revealed it on her deathbed at 92. As well, my mother was abused by her brother and it affected her whole life. This was all revealed to me when I was middle aged. The shock to me was how everyone acted like nothing was amiss. And then I realized I was the first generation in three to not be the victim of incest. Good god.
Thank you for sharing your story. It’s so hard for us to sort through our own stories when they are so incredibly distressing. To read other people sorting helps us to sort through our own.
I too was bullied as a child by my mom.and ended up marrying a narcissist exactly like her, who bullied and abused me verbally and emotionally blackmailed me. Until he got convicted for abusing me, I would never have stopped the vicious cycle of abuse and eventually got my healing and freedom from years and years of misery and woundedness. It is an imperfect world but somehow I got to stop the cycle by conciously treating my children the opposite of how I was treated, and they turned out to be the most loving and generous human beings I know. We have freewill to choose and stop the cycle if we choose kindness over revenge.
I was under the impression that men never get convicted for emotional and verbal abuse. Can you say more about this if you’re able? The narrative I always hear is that it isn’t worth trying and that you’re just on your own!
Yes. Again thank you for being a voice for the many.
Thanks for this – it is timely for me. I’m wondering even about the 0-3 primary caretaking years. I know how important that is also I have a 9 year old and I feel like only now is she ready for me to shift into slightly less intensive parenting. And that only perpetuates the financial divide between me and being able to provide for myself and also for her. This is really a system that doesn’t work for women – I think that’s why we don’t say it out loud. We’re culturally fine with all that.
I actually think the system works just fine for women. Women are entitled to half of marital assets and women are entitled to child support. If the kid is living 50/50 and the women are not entitled to child support then it’s probably the case that the dad is not so incredibly awful becuase he is alone with the kid 50% of the time. So then the only case in which a woman is in a bad situation with a child is when the dad is out of the picture and she does not have child support.
I was in this sitaution so I did a ton of reserch about it. There are VERY FEW college educated women who have children and are divorced and do not receive child support or financial help from their family. So in that case, the system works pretty well for educated women.
Of course, raising kids without financial help was hell. I did it and I get how hard it is. But the system is set up so there are very few of us.
I really love that one. I haven’t been following it at all. And then went on a deep dive. Awful I’m so exhausted I just want to sleep for years after reading that.
On a mostly unrelated note who are these women that have married them? One of them got married three times but they’ve been in prison the whole time. Is this normal?
I investigated this question! In prison there are things a spouse can do to advocate for a prisoner that other people cannot do. So each brother is — at this point – married to someone who is an advocate, not a physical partner. This was really interesting to me.
My city had a woman chief of police back around 1980 (I forget) None since then. A few years ago, when police were very ignorant about a spousal abuse case I thought: Are you kidding? Then I thought: The ones educated by the Woman’s Liberation years have aged out of the system.
Each new generation has to re-invent the wheel, I guess.
A commenter on this blog said that the I.Q. of police is average, about 100 and something. (which is good, a cop said, because then they won’t be thinking while walking the beat) This means that police won’t grasp concepts like, say, “rape culture” unless a concerted effort is made by the police headquarters. Because average people (and me) don’t internalize something they hear only once.