Italian actress Asia Argento, who became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement after accusing producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, paid hush money to a man who claimed she sexually assaulted him when he was 17, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
The US$380,000 payment was made to Jimmy Bennett, an actor and rock musician, who claimed Argento assaulted him in a California hotel room in 2013, according to the Times, which cited documents sent to the paper by an unidentified party.
Bennett was two months past his 17th birthday at the time of the alleged encounter, while Argento was 37.
The legal age of consent in California is 18.
The paper said it had tried repeatedly without success to get a comment on the matter from Argento and her representatives.
The terms of the deal including a payment schedule were finalized in April this year, according to the documents seen by the Times.
Among the documents it received was a selfie of the pair lying in bed dated May 9, 2013, that Bennett was supposed to hand over to Argento along with its copyright under the agreement.
The Times cited three people familiar with the case as saying the documents were authentic.
The pair acted together in the 2004 film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, in which Argento plays Bennett’s troubled mother.
Argento’s lawyer Carrie Goldberg described the money as “helping Mr Bennett,” lamenting that the actress had to deal with people “who preyed on both your strengths and your weaknesses.”
Bennett’s lawyers had characterized the hotel encounter as a “sexual battery” that traumatized the former child actor, threatening his mental health and income.
His notice of intent to sue sought US$3.5 million in damages for “intentional infliction of emotional distress, lost wages, assault and battery,” the newspaper said.
Argento became a powerful voice for the #MeToo movement after accusing Weinstein of raping her when she was 21 in his hotel room in 1997 during the Cannes film festival.
Bennett’s legal action was launched a month after Argento’s accusations against Weinstein were made public, the Times said, adding that his lawyer claimed his client recalled the hotel encounter after seeing Argento present herself as a victim of sexual assault.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema