Rose McGowan has publicly apologized to fellow actress Asia Argento after being threatened with a lawsuit for saying what Argento called “horrendous lies” in regards to the sexual assault allegations made against the latter by actor Jimmy Bennett.
McGowan issued a statement on Twitter, in which she said that her August 27 statement about the allegations against Argento “contained a number of facts that were not correct” and that she “deeply regret[ted] not correcting” her mistake sooner, the Guardian reported.
The “most serious mistake” McGowan referred to was when she alleged that Bennett sent “unsolicited nude text messages” to Argento when he was only 12 years of age, and that Argento hadn’t handled said text messages appropriately.
On September 17, Argento gave McGowan 24 hours to apologize for her statement, otherwise she would have to face “legal action.” She said she had instructed her lawyers to “seek substantial damages for deception, fraud, coercion and libel.”
And now the fallout seems to have come to an end as Argento replied to McGowan’s tweet, saying she was “grateful” for her apology – even though the scandal turned her life upside down.
“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 pedophilia which I have been subjected to in real-life and online,” Argento said.
The two stars have been prominent figures in the #MeToo movement. As previously reported by the Inquisitr , they became close after they both came forward and accused Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexually assaulting them.
The feud between the two started when news broke out that actor Jimmy Bennett accused Argento of sexually assaulting him when he was only 17 and she was 37. Bennett claims the incident took place in a California hotel, and that Argento paid him $380,000 in a bid to keep him quiet – a settlement that was proved by documents held by the two actors’ lawyers, which were sent anonymously to the New York Times .
Following the assault allegations from Bennett, McGowan released her August statement, in which she claimed her partner Rain Dove confirmed Argento had been sexually involved with the underage actor based on text messages he received from Argento.
“What was hard was the shell shock of the realization that everything the #MeToo movement stood for was about to be in jeopardy,” McGowan said.
Argento has denied all allegations and claimed her then-partner, the late Anthony Bourdain, paid Bennett to aid him with “severe economic problems,” according to the Guardian .