Multiple generations of family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez pleaded for the brothers' release from prison on Wednesday, saying they deserve to be free despite life sentences for the 1989 killings of their parents in Beverly Hills because they had been "brutalized” and sexually abused by their father. The American public “vilified” the brothers in the wake of the notorious crime. The jurors who sentenced them to life without parole in 1996 were part of a society that was not ready then to hear that boys could be raped, their relatives said Wednesday during a news conference in downtown Los Angeles. Joan Andersen VanderMolen, Kitty Menendez’s sister, said the wider family did not know about the extent of the abuse, and she’s spent years struggling to come to terms with it all. MORE: https://www.wthr.com/article/news/nation-world/menendez-brothers-family-to-push-for-their-release/507-08fa3965-cfb7-4cda-abb3-cdc0a8556112