Harvey Weinstein’s MeToo accuser paid $380k to boy who said she attacked him
Alleged assault when he was still underage
HARVEY Weinstein accuser Asia Argento paid $380,000 (€330,000) to a teenage costar who accused her of sexual assault. The MeToo figurehead was accused of assaulting the boy, who was 17 at the time, in a Los Angeles hotel.
Ms Argento, 42, was one of the first actresses to accuse disgraced Miramax producer Weinstein of sexual assault in October last year.
In November, she received a notice to sue from former child star Jimmy Bennett over an incident said to have taken place in 2013 when the actress was 37.
The document claims Ms Argento lured the teen to her room and sent away his chaperone before plying him with alcohol and giving him love letters.
The Italian actress, who is 20 years his senior, then kissed him and pushed him on to the bed where she performed a sex act on him, the notice claimed.
She then allegedly climbed on top of him before having sex with him. The original notice asked for $3.45million (€3million) in damages for the ‘intentional infliction of emotional distress, lost wages, assault and battery’.
Ms Argento, who dated celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain until his suicide in June, settled the claim out of court earlier this year for $380,000.
In the documents, Bennett’s lawyers claimed the ‘sexual battery’ was so traumatising that it had affected their client’s acting career.
The pair met when Bennett, now 22, played Ms Argento’s son in 2004 film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. He was just seven at the time. The pair have met up again on several occasions since, with the actress referring to him as ‘my son’ on social media.
‘Waiting for my long lost son my love Jimmy Bennett in trepidation, smoking cigarettes like there was no next week,’ the actress wrote on Instagram on May 9, 2013. It was during that reunion, in her room at a Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, California on that date, that the assault is alleged to have occurred. According to the notice to sue, Mr Bennett had been taken to the hotel by a family member, but Ms Argento asked them to leave.
The age of consent in California is 18. According to the New York Times, the document also included three photos apparently taken by Mr Bennett during the encounter which showed him and Ms Argento in bed together, although only one of the photos showed their faces.
More than 75 women have accused Weinstein, who was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, of wrongdoing since the MeToo movement – a global campaign against sexual assault – gathered momentum. Court proceedings have since begun in relation to three different women. Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
His accusers include film actress Rose McGowan, who said Weinstein raped her in 1997 in Utah; Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra, who said he raped her in her New York apartment in 1992; and the Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe, who said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008.
Allegations made by three women underpin the criminal case against him: former actress Lucia Evans, former production assistant Mimi Haleyi and an anonymous accuser.
A representative for Ms Argento did not respond to requests for comment last night.
‘Intentional infliction of emotional distress’