Asia Argento alleged sex assault victim was accused of stalking, statutory rape: Report

The man who claimed Asia Argento sexually assaulted him when he was a minor has been accused of stalking a former girlfriend and pressuring her into sex when she was underage.

The Daily Beast obtained court documents showing that Argento accuser James Bennett’s ex-girlfriend sought a restraining order against him and claimed he coerced her into sex when she was 17 years old – the same age that Bennett was in the 2013 hotel room encounter with Argento.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, the New York Times uncovered court documents filed late last year in which Bennett’s attorney announced an intent to sue Argento for an encounter in a Los Angeles-area hotel room during which Bennett claimed the plied him with  alcohol and had sex with him. Text messages between Argento and a friend appearing to confirm the sexual encounter were subsequently leaked to TMZ, but Argento denied the accusation in a statement given to a freelance reporter last month.

In the same statement, Argento admitted that her late boyfriend Anthony Bourdain agreed to pay her accuser a settlement of nearly $400,000 —  at Bourdain’s insistence, she claimed — in order to protect their privacy.

According to court documents obtained by the Daily Beast, Bennett’s one-time girlfriend filed for a temporary restraining order against him in 2015, claiming that he was stalking and threatening her, and that she was afraid for herself, her mother and an on-again former boyfriend. But the order was dismissed when the unidentified woman, reportedly an actress, did not appear for a court date.

In the court filing, the woman claimed that she had previously gone to the Los Angeles Police Department with a complaint that Bennett had engaged in unlawful sex, used child pornography, and threatened her. The LAPD could not confirm her complaint to the Daily Beast.

“When I was 17 and Jimmy was 18, he talked me into having sex with him. I had never had sex before,” she wrote by hand in the complaint. “He continued to talk his way into my life and manipulate me into doing things like smoke. His constant attempts at calling and texting with things like ‘please talk to me, I need help’ etc. caused me to answer in the past.”

It does not appear that Bennett faced any charges or legal penalties connected to the allegations. The accuser, her attorney, and family members did not respond to the Daily Beast‘s request for comment.

[Feature image: Arthur Mola for Invision via AP]