14 DAY TRIAL // As he’s promoting his new film, “Bullet to the Head,” Sylvester Stallone is seeing his past come back to haunt him. The details of a 26-year-old agreement have emerged online, and it shows he paid his half-sister to destroy recordings that could have painted him as an abuser.
Toni-Ann Filiti accused her half-brother, Sly, of years-long abuse, which, in turn, ruined her life and sent her on a downwards spiral.
In 1987, Stallone agreed to pay her off to make the lawsuit go away and, as part of the deal, he got to see the tapes Filiti was using against him destroyed.
There is no word on what exactly was on those tapes, but they were recordings of conversations between Stallone and his half-sister, which could have backed up the abuse allegations she made, Radar Online reports.
“In paperwork obtained by The New York Post’s Page Six, the agreement was signed 26 years ago and shows Sly agreeing to pay Toni-Ann $2 million [€1.47 million] plus $16,666.66 [€12,281.08] every month in her lifetime, on top of a trust with $50,000 [€36,843] per year for medical and psychiatric expenses,” Radar writes.
Filiti died last August of lung cancer, but her son is telling the press that she was right all along: Stallone had abused her when he was younger and then he paid her hush money to make the scandal go away, because his star was just rising and he knew he couldn’t risk to lose it all.
At the same time, the actor’s mother insists that the agreement that buried the abuse story was the result of blackmail and, why not, bad legal counsel.
“This was nothing more than a shakedown. Toni-Ann was on 65 Oxycontin pills a day, and she threatened Sylvester. A drug addict will do anything. When Sylvester became famous, she didn’t have to hook. He was trying to help her. He caved in,” Jackie Stallone is quoted as saying.
“There were too many conflicting stories… At the time [in 1987] he was very hot, and his lawyers said, ‘Give her something just to shut her up’,” the actor’s mother underlines.