Rose McGowan, one of the leading voices of the #MeToo movement, said Monday that her partner had exchanged text messages with the actress and director Asia Argento in which Ms. Argento said that she had indeed slept with the actor Jimmy Bennett — an act that Ms. Argento recently denied.
In a lengthy statement, Ms. McGowan also said that her partner — the model Rain Dove — told her that in text messages, Ms. Argento had said that she had been receiving unsolicited nude photos of Mr. Bennett since the time he was 12 years old and had not informed the authorities or told him to stop sending the photos.
A spokeswoman for Rain Dove confirmed in an email that everything Ms. McGowan said in her statement was factual.
In the statement of more than 1,000 words, Ms. McGowan took pains to both explain why she had grown close to Ms. Argento as well as suggest that she had more recently distanced herself after allegations emerged that Ms. Argento sexually assaulted Mr. Bennett when he was 17.
Ms. McGowan released her statement a few days after the celebrity news website TMZ published screenshots of what it said was a text-message conversation between Ms. Argento and a person the website called “a friend.” The spokeswoman for Rain Dove confirmed on Monday that Rain Dove was the friend.
In her statement, Ms. McGowan described Ms. Argento as someone who had been a friend whom she had “loved” — all in the past tense. Ms. McGowan also said she had urged her partner to tell the police about the texts from Ms. Argento, which Rain Dove told Ms. McGowan had been done. Ms. McGowan also acknowledged that she had worried that the #MeToo movement “was about to be in jeopardy.”
An email seeking confirmation of the events described by Ms. McGowan that was sent to an address listed as a contact for Rain Dove did not receive an immediate response. In a text message, a screenshot of which was provided by her publicist, Ms. McGowan said: “Rain confirms that everything is true.”
Gordon K. Sattro, a lawyer for Mr. Bennett, did not immediately respond Monday to an email seeking comment about Ms. McGowan’s remarks and the allegations they contained.
Last fall, Ms. Argento was among the first women to publicly accuse the producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. Around the same time, a New York Times articledetailing Mr. Weinstein’s behavior reported the existence of a previously undisclosed settlement between Mr. Weinstein and Ms. McGowan related to an episode in a hotel room. Soon after the publication of the Times article, Ms. McGowan became one of Mr. Weinstein’s most vocal accusers.
On Monday, Ms. McGowan acknowledged that over the course of the last year, she had “bonded” with Ms. Argento over their shared trauma, and said the two had even gotten matching tattoos. But she added that while she appreciates Ms. Argento’s bravery in coming forward with her allegations against Mr. Weinstein, she implored Ms. Argento to “be the person you wish Harvey could have been.”
“I’ve frankly been extremely humbled by this event,” Ms. McGowan said. “There absolutely should be no leeway or tolerance for sexual assault. Hard stop. NONE. Victims also shouldn’t be told how they should react or what they should say about their abusers. However as allies to the victim and voyeurs of an event we should find a better way to balance support of the victim with due process for the accused.”
“We cannot let this moment break the momentum of a movement that has freed so many people,” she wrote. “We must use it to allow us to become stronger. More compassionate. More aware. And more organized.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: NY Times