In the text, the Italian actress admits that she had sex with an underage boy, telling her friend that it 'felt weird.'
- Aug 23, 2018
AceShowbiz - Explosive photographs and texts purportedly showing Asia Argento admitting to sleeping with a 17-year-old have been leaked online.
On Sunday, August 19, the New York Times published a report claiming that the Italian actress had agreed to pay Jimmy Bennett, her co-star in 2004 movie The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, $380,000 (£295,000) after he claimed she sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room in 2013, when he was 17 and she was 37. She has denied the allegations.
As part of the agreement, Bennett allegedly gave a photograph, which reportedly showed them topless in bed, and its copyright to the xXx star, and that photograph has now surfaced on TMZ.com. The snap, which shows them lying down with their heads resting on a pillow, is reportedly one of four images Bennett took during their alleged stay at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Marina del Rey.
Asia Argento and 17-Year-Old Boy in Bed in Sexual Encounter https://t.co/y6EeKOdPT7
— TMZ (@TMZ) 22 August 2018
Editors at the website have also obtained an apparent text conversation between Argento, now 42, and a friend talking about the alleged incident on Monday, after the Times report was published.
In the texts, Argento told her friend, "the horny kid jumped me" and "I had sex with him it felt weird. I didn't know he was a minor until the shakedown letter," referring to the notice of intent to sue sent to Argento's lawyer by Bennett's in November (17).
The friend asked her about the photo, and Argento allegedly replied, "You can see my t*ts. That's all. It doesn't mean s**t... He is standing up."
When asked how she didn't know his age since they had previously worked together, the actress purportedly wrote that the age of consent is 15 in France and her native Italy (it is 14), as opposed to 18 in California.
She denied the allegations in a statement to the Guardian on Tuesday, calling them "absolutely false" and adding, "I have never had any sexual relationship with Bennett." She explained that her boyfriend, the late chef Anthony Bourdain, agreed to the settlement.
In the texts, Argento writes that she and her lawyer Carrie Goldberg disagreed with that idea but Bourdain, who hired a private investigator to look into Bennett, pushed for it.
"Carrie never wanted to do this, she wanted to go to the press first and show the extortion I was being threatened with," she wrote.
TMZ.com also obtained a photograph of a note reportedly handwritten by Bennett on Ritz-Carlton stationary which read, "Asia, I love you with all my heart. So glad we met again and I'm so glad your (sic) in my life. Jimmy."
She sent the picture of the note to a friend with the message, "He wrote me this afterwards and kept sending me unsolicited nudes all these years up until 2 weeks before the attorneys letter." Another text reads, "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 was 12."
