Sylvester Stallone is recalling a past stay at a mental institution as a teenager.
“In my age group, the teenagers, if you ever snuck out to see a girl or do something like that, you’d be reprimanded by being taken to a place called Park Lodge or the Snake Pit,” Stallone, 80, told The New York Times in a profile published Saturday, September 26, repeating claims mentioned in his new memoir, The Steps, about his experience at Devereux Manor High School. “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.”
He continued, “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.”
According to Stallone, he was once remanded to a psychiatric ward for “a couple of weeks.”
“It was wild, but this to me, was one of the better things that happened, too,” the action star recalled. “I said, ‘I know they’re going to try to break me.’ I was attacked there. They tried to rip my groin off.”
Stallone claimed that he was sent to the facility alongside a fellow student nicknamed Jay Bird.
“He was big, had no hair, always naked, rotten teeth. They called him Jay Bird because he was always naked as a jaybird,” he told The Times. “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.”
Stallone continued, “Then, the two guards come in and they’re beating the crap out of him with razor straps. I go, ‘What the hell is wrong with him?’ And they say, ‘You’re in a crazy house, boy. Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s crazy.’”
Following the alleged attack, Stallone said he took “a much better lesson” from the incident.
“When I came out of there and was standing before the school principal and he said, ‘You learned your lesson?’ I said, ‘I learned a lot more than that lesson. A much better lesson: You can’t break me,’” he stated. “So when I got to [New York City in my 20s] 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.”
Stallone attended Devereux Manor High School, an educational institution in Pennsylvania run by Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health foundation. A rep for Devereux told The Times that they respect Stallone’s “right to tell his story his own way” and are “sorry for any trauma he remembers experiencing” without directly commenting on the accusations.
The Steps hits bookstore shelves Tuesday, September 29.
