‘I was raped’: Boy-band members allege abuse, exploitation in disturbing doc

nypost.com:

“Livin’ La Vida Loca,” members of his former boy-band Menudo — one of the biggest Latin groups of all time — were living a nightmare.In a new documentary, Angelo Garcia — who joined Menudo after he had just turned 11 — said he was raped during his 1988-90 stint with the quintet.

He details the sexual assault — which he said took place in his hotel room after he was given alcohol by an undisclosed man — in “Menudo: Forever Young,” a four-part docuseries that premieres on HBO Max Thursday.  “All I remember was that I, like, passed out.

When I woke up, I was naked and I was bleeding, so I knew that I had been penetrated,” Garcia said in the documentary. “I had, like, these burn marks on my face from the rug … I was very confused and I didn’t understand.”That wasn’t the only time Garcia said he was molested during his tenure with the group. “During my time in Menudo, I was raped a series of times, and that was the way that predators would take advantage of me,” he said in the documentary.Other members of Menudo — which featured 32 different boys during its initial, 20-year run — also claimed they endured sexual abuse, as well as bullying, drug scandals and oppressive working conditions in “Forever Young.” Such negligence and exploitation, they said, took place while they worked for the boy band’s mastermind, Edgardo Díaz, who is described as “their manager, producer and father surrogate.” (Díaz, who did not respond to requests for an interview or comment on the allegations in the documentary, has always denied any abuse and any wrongdoing in his management of the group.)“We were pawns of his business,” said Ray Acevedo, who was in Menudo from 1985 to 1988.“Forever Young” recounts how Díaz’s brainchild, Menudo, was born in.