#Metoo: Actor says he feared speaking out on Argento assault

LOS ANGELES: A young actor who alleged in legal documents that Italian actress and filmmaker Asia Argento sexually assaulted him when he was 17 said on Wednesday that his trauma resurfaced when Argento came out as a victim of sexual assault herself last year.

“I did not initially speak out about my story because I chose to handle it in private with the person who wronged me,” Bennett, now 22, said in a statement released through his attorney.

The comments were his first made publicly since a Sunday New York Times story saying Argento reached a $380,000 legal settlement with him last year over an alleged sexual assault in a California hotel room in 2013.

Bennett said he believed there was a stigma to being sexually assaulted as a male, and that he “didn’t think that people would understand the event that took place from the eyes of a teenage boy.”

His comments come a day after the 42-year-old Argento denied having a sexual relationship with him. She said in a statement on Tuesday that she was linked “in friendship only” to Bennett, who played her son in a film in 2004.

She said the $380,000 payment was undertaken by her boyfriend Anthony Bourdain, the celebrity chef who killed himself in France in June.

The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department said it is looking into the allegations and seeking to talk to Bennett.