THE PASSION OF THE SCOOP: News that MEL GIBSON and long-suffering wife ROBYN secretly separated 2 1/2 years ago was shocking enough, but here’s my “lethal weapon” of a scoop-dee-doo that’ll blow you away.
Mel shelled out $1 million PER WEEK to keep Robyn’s lip zipped about the split while he huddled with priests at his renegade, hard-core Catholic church about how to divorce without being excommunicated!
That’s right, folks – $52 MILLION A YEAR x 2.5 = $130,000,000 – “hush money” paid to protect what’s left of his anti-Semitic, sexist image by suppressing the news that he’s a philandering dog run off by the mother of his seven children!
“Mel’s been so opinionated on his Catholic views through his film, ‘The Passion of The Christ,’ and his own public statements, that he knew he could end up looking like a hypocritical fool,” said a family insider.
“So he tried to buy time with Robyn, agreeing to give her $52 million per year – over and above whatever she’d get in a divorce settlement – to remain visibly by his side before she pulled the plug and filed. But Mel finally ran out of time.”
Totally humiliated by photos of hubby groping Russian bombshell OKSANA GRIGORIEVA on their family’s Costa Rican beach, Robyn yanked the pin and blew up their arrangement by going public.
“She didn’t want to look like a fool,” said the source. “She told Mel she was filing, and he didn’t fight her.”
Ironically, even though Mel bankrolled the building of his old-timey church in Malibu, where ceremonies are still conducted in Latin, he’s subject to its fanatically strict anti-divorce canons, and if he ever tries to remarry, “he’s basically excommunicated from the very church he founded,” said the source.
Here’s the good news: This time, Mel didn’t blame “the Jews!”
