Ex-member of Menudo says he was raped by executive

Says it was father of the Menendez brothers as a teen

It was a gripping case that was one of the first to draw a daily national audience to a televised criminal trial. Two affluent young men were charged three decades ago with murdering their parents by marching into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion with shotguns and unloading more than a dozen rounds on their mother and father while they sat on the couch.

Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted in 1996 of murdering their mother, Mary Louise, a former beauty queen who went by Kitty, and their father, Jose, a music executive, despite defense arguments that the brothers had been sexually molested for years by their father and had killed out of fear.

Now Roy Rosselló, a former member of Menudo, the boy band of the 1980s that became a global sensation, is coming forward with an allegation that he was sexually assaulted as a teenager by Jose Menendez.

The assertion was aired Tuesday in a segment on the “Today” show that outlined some of the findings of a three-part docuseries scheduled to air on Peacock, the streaming service from NBCUniversal, beginning May 2. The series, “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” based on reporting by journalists Robert Rand and Nery Ynclan, is largely focused on Rosselló. He describes an encounter with Menendez but also recounts separate incidents of sexual abuse that he said were inflicted on him by one of Menudo’s former managers when he sang as part of the group.

“I know what he did to me in his house,” Rosselló said of Menendez in the clip of the docuseries that aired on “Today.”

It is unclear what impact, if any, Rosselló’s account will have on efforts by defense lawyers to secure a new trial for the brothers.

The credibility of the brothers’ account and the admissibility of defense arguments that pointed to sex abuse as a mitigating factor in the case were central to the criminal trials that unfolded after the discovery of the murders in 1989. The first prosecution, which began in 1993, ended with two hung juries and mistrials. When the brothers were retried together two years later, they were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, where they remain.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the cases in the 1990s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Tuesday morning.

The “Today” report previewed interviews with Rosselló in which he is said to describe a visit to the Menendez home in New Jersey when he was 14 — a visit during which he said Jose Menendez drugged and raped him.

“That’s the man here that raped me,” he said in a clip of the docuseries, pointing to Menendez in a photo. “That’s the pedophile.”

Menendez had signed Menudo as an executive of RCA Records.

Rosselló has previously described being sexually abused as part of Menudo. Others have also said they were verbally, physically, emotionally, and sexually abused as part of the band in the four-part HBO Max docuseries “Menudo: Forever Young.” No one has ever been criminally charged in connection to the allegations.