Asia Argento, a #MeToo Leader, Made a Deal With Her Own Accuser
The Italian actress and director Asia Argento was among the first women in the movie business to publicly accuse the producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. She became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement. Her boyfriend, the culinary television star Anthony Bourdain, eagerly joined the fight.
But in the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18.
That claim and the subsequent arrangement for payments are laid out in documents between lawyers for Ms. Argento and Mr. Bennett, a former child actor who once played her son in a movie.
The documents, which were sent to The New York Times through encrypted email by an unidentified party, include a selfie dated May 9, 2013, of the two lying in bed. As part of the agreement, Mr. Bennett, who is now 22, gave the photograph and its copyright to Ms. Argento, now 42. Three people familiar with the case said the documents were authentic.
The Times has tried repeatedly since Thursday to get a response to the matter from Ms. Argento and her representatives. She did not reply to messages left on her phone, sent by email and sent to two of her agents, who agreed to forward it to her. Carrie Goldberg, her lawyer who handled the matter, read email messages from The Times, according to two people familiar with the case, but she has not responded. A woman who answered the phone at Ms. Goldberg’s office on Friday said the lawyer would not be available to discuss this article.
Mr. Bennett, who lives in Los Angeles, would not agree to be interviewed, said his lawyer, Gordon K. Sattro. “In the coming days,” Mr. Sattro wrote in an email, “Jimmy will continue doing what he has been doing over the past months and years, focusing on his music.”
In an April letter addressed to Ms. Argento confirming the final details of the deal and setting out a schedule of payments, Ms. Goldberg characterized the money as “helping Mr. Bennett.”
“We hope nothing like this ever happens to you again,” Ms. Goldberg wrote. “You are a powerful and inspiring creator and it is a miserable condition of life that you live among ****ty individuals who’ve preyed on both your strengths and your weaknesses.”
But for Mr. Bennett, who as a child actor charmed Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis and earned the nickname Jimmy Two-Takes because he rarely flubbed his lines, the 2013 hotel-room encounter was a betrayal that precipitated a spiral of emotional problems, according to the documents.
The fallout from “a sexual battery” was so traumatic that it hindered Mr. Bennett’s work and income and threatened his mental health, according to a notice of intent to sue that his lawyer sent in November to Richard Hofstetter, Mr. Bourdain’s longtime lawyer, who was also representing Ms. Argento at the time.
Ms. Argento, who lives in Rome, subsequently turned to Ms. Goldberg — a prominent lawyer for victims of online attacks — to handle the case. (Mr. Hofstetter is now handling the estate of Mr. Bourdain, who killed himselfin June. Although Mr. Bourdain helped Ms. Argento navigate the matter, neither Mr. Hofstetter nor Kimberly Witherspoon, Mr. Bourdain’s longtime agent and now a spokeswoman for his wife, Ottavia Busia, from whom he was separated, would comment for this article.)
Mr. Bennett’s notice of intent asked for $3.5 million in damages for the intentional infliction of emotional distress, lost wages, assault and battery. Mr. Bennett made more than $2.7 million in the five years before the 2013 meeting with Ms. Argento, but his income has since dropped to an average of $60,000 a year, which he attributes to the trauma that followed the sexual encounter with Ms. Argento, his lawyer wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/us/asia-argento-assault-jimmy-bennett.html
The Italian actress and director Asia Argento was among the first women in the movie business to publicly accuse the producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. She became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement. Her boyfriend, the culinary television star Anthony Bourdain, eagerly joined the fight.
But in the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18.
That claim and the subsequent arrangement for payments are laid out in documents between lawyers for Ms. Argento and Mr. Bennett, a former child actor who once played her son in a movie.
The documents, which were sent to The New York Times through encrypted email by an unidentified party, include a selfie dated May 9, 2013, of the two lying in bed. As part of the agreement, Mr. Bennett, who is now 22, gave the photograph and its copyright to Ms. Argento, now 42. Three people familiar with the case said the documents were authentic.
The Times has tried repeatedly since Thursday to get a response to the matter from Ms. Argento and her representatives. She did not reply to messages left on her phone, sent by email and sent to two of her agents, who agreed to forward it to her. Carrie Goldberg, her lawyer who handled the matter, read email messages from The Times, according to two people familiar with the case, but she has not responded. A woman who answered the phone at Ms. Goldberg’s office on Friday said the lawyer would not be available to discuss this article.
Mr. Bennett, who lives in Los Angeles, would not agree to be interviewed, said his lawyer, Gordon K. Sattro. “In the coming days,” Mr. Sattro wrote in an email, “Jimmy will continue doing what he has been doing over the past months and years, focusing on his music.”
In an April letter addressed to Ms. Argento confirming the final details of the deal and setting out a schedule of payments, Ms. Goldberg characterized the money as “helping Mr. Bennett.”
“We hope nothing like this ever happens to you again,” Ms. Goldberg wrote. “You are a powerful and inspiring creator and it is a miserable condition of life that you live among ****ty individuals who’ve preyed on both your strengths and your weaknesses.”
But for Mr. Bennett, who as a child actor charmed Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis and earned the nickname Jimmy Two-Takes because he rarely flubbed his lines, the 2013 hotel-room encounter was a betrayal that precipitated a spiral of emotional problems, according to the documents.
The fallout from “a sexual battery” was so traumatic that it hindered Mr. Bennett’s work and income and threatened his mental health, according to a notice of intent to sue that his lawyer sent in November to Richard Hofstetter, Mr. Bourdain’s longtime lawyer, who was also representing Ms. Argento at the time.
Ms. Argento, who lives in Rome, subsequently turned to Ms. Goldberg — a prominent lawyer for victims of online attacks — to handle the case. (Mr. Hofstetter is now handling the estate of Mr. Bourdain, who killed himselfin June. Although Mr. Bourdain helped Ms. Argento navigate the matter, neither Mr. Hofstetter nor Kimberly Witherspoon, Mr. Bourdain’s longtime agent and now a spokeswoman for his wife, Ottavia Busia, from whom he was separated, would comment for this article.)
Mr. Bennett’s notice of intent asked for $3.5 million in damages for the intentional infliction of emotional distress, lost wages, assault and battery. Mr. Bennett made more than $2.7 million in the five years before the 2013 meeting with Ms. Argento, but his income has since dropped to an average of $60,000 a year, which he attributes to the trauma that followed the sexual encounter with Ms. Argento, his lawyer wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/us/asia-argento-assault-jimmy-bennett.html