[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Sylvester Stallone is opening up about a deeply disturbing chapter from his teenage years — and the story is genuinely horrifying.
In his upcoming memoir The Steps, due out on Tuesday, the Rocky star recounts being sent to a psychiatric facility as punishment for misbehavior at high school decades ago. And there, he says he endured two terrifying weeks and was attacked by another patient in the most horrific way.
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Speaking with the New York Times in a profile published Saturday, Stallone recalled his high school using a place called Park Lodge, or the “Snake Pit,” to discipline students.
Stallone explained:
“On the outside it looked like a big, old Tudor home from the ’20s, and then you walked inside and you entered the heart of insanity. The smell, the filth, people running around naked, clawing, hands tied, drooling. This is what they thought would impress you never to break the rules again.”
Stallone said the experience became even more frightening when a patient he identified as “Jay Bird” allegedly attacked him in a bathroom.
The film star revealed:
“He was big, had no hair, always naked, rotten teeth. They called him Jay Bird because he was always naked as a jaybird. And I go into the bathroom on the way to the food mess hall, and he comes in and comes around me and he’s like ripping on my throat and he is going into my pants and grabbing my groin.”
According to Stallone’s account, two guards intervened, and:
“[They began] beating the crap out of him [Bird] with razor straps.”
When Stallone returned to school, he said the principal asked whether he had learned his lesson. His response, as recounted this weekend, would stay with him for years:
“I said: ‘I learned a lot more than that lesson. A much better lesson: You can’t break me.’ So when I got to the city [New York] and everything that came after that, I always felt I was unbreakable in that way. My heart could be broken, like every human being, but I’m talking about will.”
BTW, the NYT contacted Stallone’s former high school. A spokesperson said the school had not read the book but respected Stallone’s “right to tell his story his own way” and apologized “for any trauma he remembers experiencing.” Huh…
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The memoir also delves into Stallone’s difficult family life — including his description of his mother as lacking in nurturing and his father as unpredictable and violent — and revealed the star’s struggles with bulimia and steroid abuse while preparing for 1982’s Rocky III.
Which, wow. What a set of stories. Reactions, y’all? Share ’em (below)…
If you have sincere cause to suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org.
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[Image via MEGA/WENN]
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