Bombshell Accusation Against #MeToo Leader and Anthony Bourdain Girlfriend Asia Argento
How many more #MeToo leaders are going to find themselves with unearthed accusations of sexual misconduct before we realize the movement is likely not the answer to sexual misconduct?
There was a time when widely-accepted moral standards for sex prevented much of what we’re seeing today. When most extra-marital sex was considered taboo, it didn’t matter if something was “harassment” or “assault” or “abuse”, it mattered that it was wrong for anyone to solicit sex from anyone else who wasn’t their spouse.
Now that anything goes, the lines have become incredibly blurred, and anyone who has engaged in consensual sexual activity with anyone else is subject to said consent being withdrawn.
So let me say it loud and clear: extramarital sex is dangerous, at best, and according to the Bible, is downright wrong.
Sex is meant for the confines of marriage when consent has been established permanently at the start of the union. When you rip the intimacy of sexual contact from this protective context, it immediately becomes very risky to define as right or wrong by any other standards.
Especially when one of the parties involved is twenty years older than the other, which is exactly what may have happened to actress Asia Argento, who last year made herself a face of the #MeToo movement with an impassioned speech at Cannes Film Festival.
The New York Times reports:
The Italian actress and director Asia Argento was among the first women in the movie business to publicly accuse the producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. She became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement. Her boyfriend, the culinary television star Anthony Bourdain, eagerly joined the fight.
But in the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18.
That claim and the subsequent arrangement for payments are laid out in documents between lawyers for Ms. Argento and Mr. Bennett, a former child actor who once played her son in a movie.
The documents, which were sent to The New York Times through encrypted email by an unidentified party, include a selfie dated May 9, 2013, of the two lying in bed. As part of the agreement, Mr. Bennett, who is now 22, gave the photograph and its copyright to Ms. Argento, now 42. Three people familiar with the case said the documents were authentic.
Creepily enough, the two had a long relationship and Bennett had believed it was more of a mother-son type relationship, a sentiment Argento clearly expressed as well, in an Instagram post dated the day of the alleged attack:
https://instagram.com/p/ZGgF37IwxH/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_loading_state_control
On May 9, 2013, the day they met for a reunion in her room at a Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, Calif., she posted on Instagram: “Waiting for my long lost son my love @jimmymbennett in trepidation #marinadelrey smoking cigarettes like there was no next week.”
Mr. Bennett responded, “I’m almost there!:)”
Mr. Bennett, who has an eye condition that prevents him from driving, arrived at Ms. Argento’s hotel room that morning with a family member, according to his notice of intent.
Advertisement - story continues belowThe document lays out Mr. Bennett’s account: Ms. Argento asked the family member to leave so she could be alone with the actor. She gave him alcohol to drink and showed him a series of notes she had written to him on hotel stationery. Then she kissed him, pushed him back on the bed, removed his pants and performed oral sex. She climbed on top of him and the two had intercourse, the document says. She then asked him to take a number of photos.
Bennett had just turned 16.
Hollywood has a serious problem with sexual deviance, abuse, assault, and while the abusers are not limited to men, the victims are not limited to adults.
Abuse is rampant in the entertainment industry and celebrities like Argento are the last people who need to be lecturing us about how to prevent it.
