Actress Argento recalls sexual encounter with accuser Bennett
ROME: Italian actress Asia Argento, who became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement after accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, admitted she had sex with young actor Jimmy Bennett, who claimed she sexually assaulted him as a teen.
On a television show in Italy on Sunday, Argento, who had denied having sex with Bennett, recounted her relationship with him.
Argento, who played his mother in the 2004 film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, again in
May 2013, when he was 17 and she, 37.
In his account of t h e e ncounter he gave in a
Sept 24 interview on
Italian television, Argento kissed him for a long time.
“It turned into her placing her hands on me and following that was when she pushed me onto the bed and took my pants off,” said the actor, now 22.
Asked if it was a “complete” relationship, Bennett said it was, implying they had sex, but declined to go into detail.
He was 17 at the time. The age of consent in California is 18.
Argento denied his version of events, saying he had asked her to help him prepare for an audition, as she did when he was a child.
“He started kissing me and touching me, but not as a mother and child as I saw him, but as a boy with raging hormones... And that froze me,” she said.
“He literally jumped on me... He was on me, and he came... I didn’t react because for me it was unthinkable,” she added.
“He told me it was a fantasy he’d had since the age of 12. For him, I was a hunting trophy.”
This winter, Bennett asked for US$3.5 million (RM14.5 million) to keep quiet. Her late boyfriend, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, reportedly paid him $250,000. Following Bourdain’s suicide in June, Argento suspended the payments.