Asia Argento says it was her young accuser Jimmy Bennett who sexually assaulted her – and refuses to pay him any more money
ASIA Argento says her former child star accuser is the one who sexually assaulted her - and has refused to pay him any more money.
Jimmy Bennett claims the Italian actress and #MeToo campaigner had sex with him when he was just 17 - then paid him £300,000.
Her lawyer Mark Jay Heller told he "sexually attacked" her at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Marina del Rey, California in 2013.
He said Jimmy was lucky Asia did not decide to prosecute.
Asia denies having sex with Jimmy, despite text messages emerging in which she says to a pal: "The horny kid jumped me. I had sex with him it felt weird."
She said she only paid him money on the advice of late partner Anthony Bourdain.
Heller added: ";Now that Mr. Bourdain has passed away and is not able to comment on his desire to avoid potential scandal.
"Asia will not permit any portion of the balance of the $380,000 payment to be paid to Bennett who has already received $250,000 from Anthony Bourdain.”
He added: "Asia does not intend to prosecute Bennett for his conduct and recognises that his unfortunate past, his stalled acting career, and a lawsuit against his own parents for allegedly misappropriating more than a million and a half dollars from his account might explain his desperation to seek money from Asia and Bourdain for this falsely alleged incident that took place more than 5 years ago."
The young actor reportedly claimed that in 2013 he had sex with Argento in a hotel room in California, where the age of consent is 18.
Included with documents was a selfie showing the partially-nude couple in bed dated May 2013, when Bennett was 17 and Argento was 37, the report said.
Bennett’s lawyer filed a notice of intent demanding $3.5 million in damages in November — one month after Argento and 12 other women publicly accused Weinstein of rape.
The notice claimed that Argento’s “sexual battery” of Bennett left him with lasting emotional trauma that rendered him unable to make a living, the report said.
The pair met in 2004 when Argento cast Bennett, then just 7, to play her son in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.
It was an early highlight in a prolific childhood acting career for Bennett, who also appeared in Daddy Day Care and The Amityville Horror.
In 2013, Bennett was visiting Argento’s California hotel room when she convinced a relative to leave them alone, the documents claim.
He says she then plied him with alcohol and sexually assaulted him, it’s alleged in the filing.
Lawyers for Argento and Bennett agreed to a deal in which she would pay him the settlement over a year-and-a-half, beginning last April, according to the report.
Argento became one of the most well-known activists of the #MeToo movement after she told the New Yorker magazine that Weinstein raped her at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 when she was 21.
Argento told the magazine that she continued to have a relationship with Weinstein because she was afraid of angering him.
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Weinstein has been indicted on sex crime accusations involving three women, but not including Argento.
Heller added: “Asia’s courage to originally make the accusations against Harvey Weinstein has not waned."
Representatives for Argento could not be immediately for comment.
Through a representative, Bennett declined to comment to the Times.
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