Jimmy Bennett has spoken. Asia Argento’s alleged sexual abuse victim has released a statement that backs up The New York Times’s bombshell report Sunday that he and Argento had sex when he was a minor and that he received a $380,000 settlement from her. The basic claims of the parties are now known, but the fallout is just beginning.
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Bennett speaks: Bennett kept silent for a few days after The New York Times broke the Argento story, but issued a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday. “I did not initially speak out about my story because I chose to handle it in private with the person who wronged me," he said. "My trauma resurfaced as she came out as a victim herself. 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."
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Who Could It Be Now: The Times reported that it received the documents laying out the payment, along with a selfie of Argento and Bennett in bed together, from an anonymous and encrypted email source. The New Yorker, which published the first on-the-record accounts of Weinstein’s alleged predations, later reported on the private security agencies he paid to collect damaging information about the women accusing him of sexual harassment and assault and to track the journalists trying to report on their allegations.
“This development reveals a stunning level of hypocrisy by Asia Argento, one of the most vocal catalysts who sought to destroy Harvey Weinstein,” his attorney Ben Brafman said in a statement after the Times first reported on Argento’s settlement with Bennett.
For his part, Bennett appears to be trying to avoid the public spotlight. He waited three days to release a statement. Since the story broke, he’s only been seen in public sporting a shirt that says “fuck off.”
Evolving explanations: Argento has offered a shifting series of explanations for the allegations. When the Times story first dropped, she first released a statement saying she’d never had sex with Bennett—only for her lawyer, Gordon Sattro, to deny her denial hours later. In a statement to reporter Yashar Ali that same day, she said she was “linked to [Bennett] by friendship only” and said the decision to nonetheless pay him was made by her late boyfriend, Anthony Bourdain. “Anthony insisted the matter be handled privately and this was also what Bennett wanted,” she wrote, claiming that Bourdain “personally undertook to help Bennett economically” on her behalf as he we afraid of “negative publicity” and thought Bennett was “dangerous."
Photos and texts: Since then, TMZ has published photos of Argento and Bennett seemingly naked together in bed and alleged text messages between her and a friend. The messages, which Argento has yet to comment on, refer to the Times story and appear to show her admitting to sex with Bennett while claiming ignorance of his age. “I had sex with him it felt weird. I didn't know he was a minor until the shakedown letter.” In other messages, she casts Bennett as the aggressor, writing “The horny kid jumped me” and "It wasn't raped [sic] but I was frozen. He was on top of me. After, he told me I had been his sexual fantasy since I was 12."
Lawsuit: Argento’s statement to Ali references Bennett’s alleged “severe economic problems" and a lawsuit against his parents as suggested motives for his settlement with her. As the Times story referenced, he sued his parents in 2014 alleging that they had mishandled his acting earnings while he was a minor. Rabbit Hole pulled a copy of the suit and it alleges that Bennett had earned $2 million from acting work by the time he turned 18. In the suit, he claimed his parents “misappropriated” $1.5 million of that money and used some of the money to invest in a since-closed candy store and Rockin Crepes, a restaurant in Huntington Beach.
Foreshadowing: What makes the allegations against Argento all the more creepy is that they hew closely to the plot of the movie she directed Bennett in when she was in her late 20s and he was 7. In The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Argento played a negligent mother who takes Bennett’s character out of foster care and subjects him to a life of abuse, including sexual assault at the hands of her associates. The graphic nature of the film itself left film critic Roger Ebert to wonder whether the young Bennett’s participation was appropriate “For young actors, there is not a clear distinction between performance and experience, and although I hope the child actors were not harmed in the making of the film, I feel no confidence that the experience left them untouched.”
Criminal investigation: The age of consent in California is 18 and Argento could be criminally liable given that Bennett was 17 at the time of the alleged incident. For the moment, police say they’re looking into it. After The New York Times published its story, the LA County Sheriff’s Department published a statement that “has not located any police report alleging criminal activity” in the Times story, but “is attempting to reach out to the reported victim.”
The movement reacts: Other leading figures in the #MeToo movement victimized by Harvey Weinstein have emphasized that the #MeToo movement is bigger than any one individual and expressed disappointment over the allegations against Argento.
Rose McGowan, one of the earliest accusers to go public with rape allegations against Weinstein, tweeted that her “heart is broken” after hearing about the allegations. When some Twitter users accused her of being insufficiently tough on Argento, she brushed back the complaints, tweeting “Oh for fuck’s sake I’m not defending.”
Tarana Burke, the activist who first founded the #MeToo movement back in 2006, expressed support for Bennett and deemphasized the importance of any one individual in the campaign to support sexual abuse victims and hold perpetrators accountable. “I’ve said repeatedly that the #metooMVMT is for all of us, including these brave young men who are now coming forward,” she tweeted. “It will continue to be jarring when we hear the names of some of our faves connected to sexual violence unless we shift from talking about individuals and begin to talk about power.”
Mira Sorvino, who accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and sabotaging her career, declared herself “heartsick” over the charges. “Time will clarify things and perhaps she will be exonerated, but if true, there is no lens that makes it better. Child sexual assault is a heinous crime and is against all that I and the #MeToo movement stands for.”
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