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"We have been drugged and raped several times", the shocking stories of the members of the group where Ricky Martin was also part of

2022-06-24 09:10:39Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

"We have been drugged and raped several times", the shocking stories

Before Ricky Martin sang "Livin 'La Vida Loca", members of his former band Menudo - one of the greatest Latin bands of all time - were living a nightmare.

In a new documentary, Angelo Garcia, who joined the group shortly after turning 11, said he was raped during his ten-year tenure, specifically 1988-90. He gives details about the sexual assault, which according to him happened in his hotel room after he was given alcohol by an undisclosed man. "Menudo: Forever Young" is a four-part documentary that will premiere on HBO Max on Thursday.

"All I can remember is that I seem to have lost my mind. "When I woke up, I was naked and I was bleeding, so I knew I had been raped," Garcia said in the documentary. "I had, like, these burn marks on my face from the carpet… I was very confused and did not understand."

This was not the only time Garcia said he was harassed during his stay in the group. "During my time at Menudo, I was raped several times, and that was the way predators would take advantage of me," he said in the documentary.

Other Menudo members, who included 32 different boys over the course of 20 years, also claimed that they endured sexual abuse, harassment, drug scandals and oppressive working conditions at Forever Young.

Such neglect and exploitation, they said, occurred while working for the boys' group organizer, Edgardo Díaz, who is described as "their manager, producer and surrogate father". Díaz has always denied any abuse or wrongdoing in his management of the group.

"We were hostage to his business," said Ray Acevedo, who was on Menudo from 1985 to 1988.

Forever Young recounts how Diaz's idea, Menudo, was born in Puerto Rico in 1977. Díaz adopted a "youth fountain strategy" for the group, where members would be replaced as soon as they turned 16 years old. The boys' parents, many of them poor, would sign for a large portion of their parental authority to the manager.

But Ricky Martin - who has not been interviewed in the documentary - did not make life so easy for the other members, according to Sergio Blass, who was on Menudo from 1986 to 1990.

"Being with Rick was brutal because he was older than me," Blass said. "So if someone knocked on the door, I had to open it. If the phone rang, I had to pick it up. I was like his housewife. "

Indeed, there was a lot of harassment in Menudo, Acevedo even recalled being held on a balcony by another member. Without proper supervision or even security, the boys were exposed to drugs, including marijuana and cocaine.

"Once we were in Colombia," Blass recalled in the documentary.

"I am with [Menudo associate] Rubén [Gómez] and we are going to the hotel. We enter our room. All of a sudden, this random guy comes in… And he pulls out what must have been about a pound of cocaine… So we were scared because we didn't know this person… But the guy was actually one of the producers and promoters. ”

Blass and Gómez were expelled from Menudo after being arrested for marijuana possession in 1990. However new members continued to come.

Andy Blázquez, who was in the group from 1991 to 1997, recalled in the documentary that he did not feel comfortable with the "extreme sexualization that happened from the beginning - as a very sexual joke that should not be told in front of children. I remember Edgardo saying, “Do you know the pleasure you get when you get caught? That's how anal sex feels. ' ”

Other members have previously accused Díaz of sexual abuse, including Roy Rosselló in a television appearance appearing in the documentary. The documentary also states that Díaz was surrounded by unpleasant men who would harass the boys.

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