“Dr. Conte, based on the information you have about Lyle Menendez and his relationship with his parents, do you believe that he hated them?”
“No I don’t think he did.”
“Did you see any evidence of hatred toward either of his parents in any of the material that you reviewed?”
“No.”
“Did you see any evidence of anger?”
“No.”
“He has described acts of physical and sexual abuse and of psychological maltreatment, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“And have you evaluated other individuals who have experienced that type of trauma in their life?”
“Yes.”
“Would you expect that someone would be angry as a result of it? Is that always the result?”
“It’s not always the result, in fact, especially for younger people is a rare result.”
“Why is that?”
“Well it has to do with the abuse taking place in the context of a family, it has to do with the child’s need to have a parent, it has to do with the child being afraid to express anger, it has to do with the child trying desperately to conform to the parent’s expectation, the anger we see in survivors, adult survivors tends to be in adults who are considerably older, who have in fact broken away from the family, have reached some level of independence and are in the stage of beginning to process the experience that they have had. Ya know… so generally I would say you don’t see high levels of anger and hatred in younger victims, on occasion you do but generally you don’t.”
“Did you to the contrary see evidence that he loved his parents?”
“Yes.”
“And what evidence did you have of that?”
“Well I think most significant is his positive efforts… his positive comments about his parents, I think his efforts to protect them even during the evaluation and during the… his testimony when he’s telling the jury about the bad things there still was an effort to protect them.”
“What do you mean by an effort to protect them?”
“I think Lyle has a tendency which I noted in my contact with him and in the testimony that I saw uh… to minimize the significance of what was done to him, to try to excuse what was done to him uh… I think that effort to protect is a kind of love for his parents.”
“Have you seen in other victims an effort to protect their parents?”
“Yes.”
“Why does that occur?”
“Well again for the reasons I mentioned that parents are all important to development uh… to reject them even when they’re bad and horrible is to suffer a loss that’s far greater than many young people are willing or able to bare, there is always the hope that things will turn around, that they will stop being the way they were, that they’ll just love you.”
“But in this case, his parents are dead, so they’re not going to… things aren’t going to turn around. Why would he want to protect their memory?”
“Well, that’s an incredibly complex question, I think for some of the following reasons, first of all Lyle is an untreated victim of child abuse, so he has very little awareness about the full impact of his life experience on him and until he is older and hopefully in therapy I don’t think he’ll begin to develop that kind of understanding and so in the same way he protected them when they were alive, he didn’t tell… he kept the secret, I think he’s continuing to do that in my contact with him and in his testimony that I saw in a way. Ya know, it’s the sort of ultimate problem, to bare what was done and the level of harm and sickness that was in that family is to do an incredibly strong and revealing thing and it’s difficult. So he’s been trained all his life not to reveal and uh… he’s been trained all his life to keep the secret and protect and not tell people and he’s done it, umm… somewhat reluctantly, he’s done it um.. but I don’t… I still think he’s kind of trying to hold back and protect.”
— Dr. John Conte, psychologist for Lyle Menendez, direct examination with Jill Lansing, regarding Lyle’s tendency to protect his parents and minimize his own suffering as a child
