Under cloud, Asia to skip Dutch fest

Asia Argento has dropped out of an upcoming Dutch music festival following the report she quietly paid a former child actor who accused her of sexual assault.

The Italian actress and filmmaker – who became a leading voice of the #MeToo movement as one of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers – will no longer curate part of the Le Guess Who? festival in November, organizers said Wednesday.

“Due to the volatile nature of the accusations surrounding Ms. Argento, she has chosen to withdraw from her curatorship of this year’s edition, while these issues remain open,” the festival organizers said.

The news came the same day TMZ claimed to have leaked text messages in which Argento, 42, allegedly confessed to having sex with actor Jimmy Bennett when he was 17 years old and she was 37.

The age of consent in California is 18.

Bennett broke his silence on the accusations Wednesday, and said in a statement he initially wanted to keep the situation private for fear of the stigma surrounding male sexual assault victims.

“I have not made a public statement in the past days and hours because I was ashamed and afraid to be part of the public narrative,” he told The New York Times. “At the time I believed there was still a stigma to being in the situation as a male in our society. I didn’t think that people would understand the event that took place from the eyes of a teenage boy.

“I would like to move past this event in my life, and today I chose to move forward, no longer in silence,” he continued.

The leaked texts appear to contradict the statement Argento released to The Guardian on Tuesday, in which she denied “any sexual relationship with Bennett.”

In the texts leaked to TMZ, Argento allegedly told a friend that she didn’t know Bennett was a minor until after they had sex on May 9, 2013, in a room at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Marina Del Rey, Calif.

“The horny kid jumped me,” Argento reportedly said in the text allegedly sent to a friend Monday and obtained by TMZ.