Menendez family: We suspected abuse from the beginning

( NewsNation ) — For many years, Kitty Menendez’s sister, Joan VanderMolen said, she struggled to come to terms with what happened in the family.

“When we finally realized the depth of the awful treatment (from Jose Menendez), and then (Kitty Menendez) admitting she knew all along, it’s beyond anything we can describe. It’s so painful,” VanderMolen said Wednesday night during an appearance on “ CUOMO .”

Cousins to the Menendez brothers’ Karen VanderMolen-Copley and Tamara Goodell also joined “CUOMO” to discuss why they’re pushing for an appeal of the brothers’ conviction.

Karen VanderMolen Copley said the family “knew there was abuse at gut level,” but it wasn’t something they wanted to believe.

“As time went on, we all talked to each other more and more. It validates the gut-level reactions that we had. … But as we talked to each other it became obvious,” VanderMolen-Copley said.

Family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez , who were convicted in 1996 of killing their parents, Jose and Kitty, held a news conference Wednesday in Los Angeles, hoping to move the needle in the brothers’ appeal of their conviction .

New evidence being looked at allegedly includes a letter from Erik Menendez to a cousin before the killings. In it, Erik Menendez details some of the sexual abuse he survived at the hands of Jose Menendez.

Plus, new allegations against Jose Menendez from a second young boy claiming to have been raped by him at 14 have come into the spotlight. In addition, the Mendenez brothers’ lawyer Mark Geragos said he may release letters Thursday from correctional officers who attest to the men’s phenomenal rehabilitation.

Goodell said the brothers’ decision to kill their parents was an “act out of pain and misery.”

“It’s something that they were so desperately wanting to get out of,” Goodell said on “CUOMO.” “And while they may have had the means to escape, they didn’t want it to happen to anyone else, which they knew could happen.”

Family members said Wednesday that if the brothers’ trial had happened in modern times, with the current understanding of trauma and abuse, the outcome would have been different.

Following Wednesday’s news conference, family members went to the Hall of Justice to meet with the resentencing unit.

NewsNation’s Devan Markham and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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