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Italian actress and ardent #MeToo advocate Asia Argento has flatly denied sexually assaulting a 17-year-old.

In a statement obtained by The New York Post’s Yashar Ali, Argento denied any wrongdoing, claiming she was “deeply shocked and hurt by having read news that is absolutely false.”

I just received this statement from @AsiaArgento in response to the NYT story published late Sunday evening. pic.twitter.com/jAOo7TAULX — Yashar Ali (@yashar) August 21, 2018

Argento was accused of having illegal sexual relations with 17-year-old Jimmy Bennett in a California hotel bedroom back in 2013. The age of legal consent in California is 18. At the time, Argento was 37-years-old and played Bennett’s mother in a sitcom they were in together.

Perhaps most surprising in Argento’s ardent denial is her claim that the $380,000 she paid Bennett to keep quiet about the encounter was actually her late-boyfriend Anthony Bourdain’s idea.

“Anthony personally undertook to help Bennett economically, upon the condition that we would no longer suffer any further intrusions in our life,” she said in the statement.

“The fallout from ‘a sexual battery’ was so traumatic that it hindered Mr. Bennett’s work and income and threatened his mental health, according to a notice of intent to sue that his lawyer sent in November to Richard Hofstetter, Mr. Bourdain’s longtime lawyer, who was also representing Ms. Argento at the time,” The New York Times reported in its bombshell expose on Monday.

Bennett, who is now 22, has remained silent on the issue since news broke on Monday.

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