Sept. 28 (UPI) — Rose McGowan has publicly apologized to Asia Argento on Twitter for a statement she previously made about Argento’s sexual assault allegations.
“On 27 August I released a statement about Asia Argento, which I now realized contained a number of facts that were not correct,” McGowan said in a lengthy statement posted on Thursday.
Argento, who was a leader in the #MeToo movement alongside McGowan, was accused of sexual assault by actor Jimmy Bennett. Bennett said, in documents obtained by the New York Times, that Argento assaulted him when he was 17. The documents also detailed how Argento arranged to pay Bennett, now 22, $380,000. Argento has denied the allegations.
“The most serious of these was that I said that the unsolicited nude text messages Asia received from Jimmy Bennett had been sent since Jimmy was 12-years-old. In fact, I misunderstood the messages that Asia exchanged with my partner Rain Dove, which made clear that Jimmy had sent Asia inappropriate text messages only after they met up again when he was 17 (still legally a minor in California, but notably different from a 12-year-old),” McGowan continued in her apology statement.
“I deeply regret not correcting my mistake sooner and apologize to Asia for not doing so,” McGowan concluded.
Argento then responded to the apology on Twitter. “Although I am grateful to @rosemcgowan for her full apology following her groundless allegations about me, if she had issued it earlier, I may have kept my job on X-Factor and avoided the constant accusations of paedophilia which I have been subjected to in real-life and online,” she said.
“Now go on, live your life and stop hurting other people, will you Rose? Best wishes,” she continued.
Argento had recently said that she was going to take legal action against McGowan over McGowan’s statement concerning the sexual assault allegations.