Asia Argento pleaded for her “X-Factor” Italy job, claiming she’s “done nothing” that she’s been accused of after being allegations of sexual assault against then-teenaged actor Jimmy Bennett were made public.
“I would like to go back to ‘X Factor’ to do my job, because my children are proud of me, Italy wants me, and I have not done anything that I’m accused of,” the 43-year-old Italian actress shared on ” Non e l’Arena” (It’s Not the Arena), according to the Hollywood Reporter Sunday. (RELATED: #MeToo Leader Allegedly Paid Off A Man She Sexually Assaulted)
Asia Argento (Photo: Getty Images)
“The thing that hurt me most was being called a pedophile,” she added. “I have children. And that is a stigma that I do not wish for anyone.”
Argento was let go as a judge from the reality TV series after a report surfaced that she had agreed to pay $380,000 to the young actor in return he would not sue her for allegedly sexually assaulting him when he was 17. She was 37 at the time.
Last week, Bennett himself showed up on the “It’s Not The Arena” program and was met with doubt by the interviewer and audience for saying that he was assaulted.
“It made me angry, but it made me especially sorry, because his eyes were glassy and there was no expression on his face,” Argento said. “I saw him as a child who then failed to pursue his career — a lost soul.”
The actress then went on to describe in detail her encounter with Bennett, who she said had asked to meet her in Los Angeles to go over lines for a script “like the old days.”
She agreed and then when she went to his hotel room seeing him as more “like a lost son” where she found he didn’t have a script.
“I did not know he was underage. I thought he was 18 because he had also told me this. It is not true that there was a chaperone,” Argento explained. “That’s why I took his face, so that’s true. He had a glazed look, like so many boys who, after 13, no longer work, have problems with their parents. He even denounced them. It made me sad.”
“I told him, ‘OK, Jimmy, maybe we can do a movie together, I can find a part for you,'” she added. “He lit up and we hugged at that moment. Then he began to kiss me and touch me in a way that was not that of a child with his mother, but that of a boy with crazy hormones.”
Argento continued, “I laugh, but it’s also a traumatic thing. Seeing this boy who had always been like a child behave like this with me completely froze me. He literally jumped on me; he put me sideways across the bed. He did what he had to do. He didn’t use a condom. It lasted for two minutes. He had an orgasm. I was cold, unable to move. Shocked, I asked him afterward why he had done this, and he told me that I had been his sexual fantasy since he was 12 years old.”
The actress was one of the leaders of the #MeToo movement after she accused disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of forcibly performing oral sex on her back in 1987.