Asia Argento has claimed she was the victim during her sexual encounter with Jimmy Bennett and has claimed she "froze" with fear when the 17 year old pounced on her.
Earlier this year, Jimmy, 22, claimed that he and Asia – whom he starred with in ‘The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things’ when he was eight and she played his mother – had sex at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Marina del Rey, California when he was 17 and she was 37. The legal age of consent in the state is 18.
Asia, 43, has now addressed what happened, insisting she was left stunned when her friend Jimmy began to kiss her and touch her "in a way that was not that of a child with his mother, but that of a boy with crazy hormones".
Appearing on Italian talk show ‘Non è l’Arena’ – one week after Jimmy was interviewed on it – she said: "He literally jumped on me; he put me sideways across the bed. He did what he had to do.
"It probably last for two minutes, he had an orgasm and didn’t use a condom. I didn’t feel pleasure and didn’t have an orgasm. After that I was cold, unable to move. Shocked, I asked him afterwards why he had done this, he told me, ‘You have been my sexual fantasy since I was 12.’ And then he took a selfie with me. How can you sexually assault a man? How can you make a guy have an erection without him wanting to?"
For her appearance on the programme, Asia – the daughter of acclaimed horror director Dario Argento – brought with her proof that she had seen a therapist for trauma in July 2013, a few months after the sexual encounter with Jimmy.
The ‘Land of the Dead’ star went on to compare the incident to when she was allegedly raped by disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein in Cannes when she was 21.
She said: "I had not even defended myself in the meeting with Weinstein. I think it’s because of some childhood trauma."
In the wake of Jimmy’s accusation, and claim that Asia’s late boyfriend Anthony Bourdain paid him $380,000 to keep quiet, the Italian starlet lost her job as a judge on ‘The X Factor Italy’ and she is adamant she deserves to get her job back because she has done nothing wrong.
Revealing she has had to send her son Nicola Civetta to go and live with his director-and-producer dad Michele Civetta in the US to prevent him from being bullied, she said: "After this story came out and someone started calling me a paedophile, I had to send my son live abroad, in the US with his father, because I feared he could be bullied in Italy.
"I’d like ‘X Factor Italy’ to take me back as a judge. I’ve done nothing wrong. My children are proud of me, Italy wants me, and I have not done anything that I’m accused of."
Asia also has a daughter Anna Lou from her relationship with Bluvertigo singer Marco Castoldi.
Asia Argento claims she was victim of sexual assault by Jimmy Bennett
