(Editor’s note: We don’t normally do stories like this but we’ve followed Anthony Bourdain’s death since the start. We’ve also followed the Weinstein case to some degree. It’s just tough to stomach that at 6’4″ he hanged himself from a doorknob in France, according to local French journalists and doctors I have talked with face to face (some immediate family).)

A recently released statement from Asia Argento paints a very different story than the one we reported on just days ago. It seems she did not pay $380,000 to silence her sexual assault accuser- Anthony Bourdain did. And, she also denies having had sex with the then 17-year-old, although there are text messages between she and Bourdain that seem to suggest otherwise.

On Sunday, The New York Times published an article claiming that Argento was accused by child star Bennett of setting up a sexual encounter with him in California when he was 17 – below the age of consent in that state – and she was 37.1

In her statement, Argento say, “I am deeply shocked and hurt by having read news that is absolutely false. I have never had any sexual relationship with Bennett.”2 (Check out her full statement in the Tweet below.)

But at issue are the texts between Bourdain and Argento about Jimmy Bennett:2

  • Bourdain wrote that paying him was “no admission of anything, no attempt to buy a cover up, simply an offer to help an obviously tortured soul whose desperate and trying to jack you for money.”
  • Bourdain also says, “You are not buying silence. Only freedom from inconvenience. And to help a ‘poor twisted goof’ get his life together.” Asia responds, “I will never buy his silence for something that isn’t true since I am also broke.”
  • He also said, “Or you just tell him to f*** himself. Either way, I am with you.”
  • In the texts, Bourdain makes it’s clear he’s handling the negotiations and instructs Argento to take a call from a rep who is involved
  • At one point, Argento seems to contradict her claim that she never had a sexual relationship with Bennett, saying, “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 he was 12.”
  • And there’s this … at one point Argento says, “I don’t fear him [Bennett]. I am no Puritan, google my ass.”

Regardless of what happened, Argento did not want or use an NDA as part of the settlement.

Sources and References

  1. Fox News, August 21, 2018.
  2. TMZ, August 21, 2018.