Washington: Hollywood actor Jimmy Bennett, who accused Asia Argento of sexually abusing him as a teenager, has finally revealed his side of the story.
In a statement, Bennett said that he was underage when the incident took place and, therefore, he tried to seek justice in a way that made sense to him at that time. He, however, added that he was afraid of the same as he did not want to deal with the ramifications of his story becoming public.
Bennett further admitted that he was stigmatised by the fact that the people would not understand the incident from his point of view.
“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,” he wrote in a statement to E! Online.
On Tuesday, ‘XXX’ star Argento had said she was shocked and deeply hurt to know about the “false news”. The actress had insisted that she and Bennett were connected “by friendship only”, which also ended when he unexpectedly asked for a lot of money from her.
As per the documents related to the case, first published by The New York Times, Argento and Bennett’s respective lawyers exchanged the accusations and the settlements.
These documents also contained a photograph from May 9, 2013, showing Argento and Bennett lying in a bed together.
Argento, who was one of the first women to raise her voice against Hollywood director Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, had allegedly settled the harassment charges levelled against her by paying an amount of 380,000 USD to her accuser with the help of his late boyfriend, Anthony Bourdain.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]