Asia Argento, actress and film director, was one of the first women to come forward with her allegations of sexual assault by Harvey Weinstein. There are now 50 women and counting who have joined with their own stories of abuse at the hands of the former movie mogul. (The Weinstein Company board fired him and the Academy has dropped him since The New York Times broke the story on October 5). And now Argento is in Germany, having fled her native Italy. The Italian media unleashed a spate of criticism for coming forward, and she’s taking a break from her country, she says.

Speaking from Berlin on Tuesday, she told an Italian television program, “Italy is far behind the rest of the world in its view of women,” and that she left the country to escape the “climate of tension” and “victim-blaming.”

Argento had anticipated some of the criticisms, noting in Ronan Farrow’s devastating New Yorker piece that the fact that she maintained a relationship with Weinstein after her alleged assault complicates her story. She told Farrow, “The thing with being a victim is I felt responsible. Because, if I were a strong woman, I would have kicked him in the balls and run away. But I didn’t. And so I felt responsible.”

Many of the personal attacks came from Italy’s right. Libero, a conservative publication, ran an opinion by Renato Farina entitled, “First they give it away, then they whine and pretend to repent.” He added, “surrendering to a boss’s advances to make a career is prostitution not rape.” (Argento tweeted that she has sued for defamation.) The paper’s editor, Vittorio Feltri, said in a radio interview that the encounter must have been consensual because he didn’t physical assault her, and that she should be thankful that he forcibly performed oral sex on her.

(Quartz’s Annalisa Merelli)[https://qz.com/1105645/italys-response-to-asia-argentos-sexual-assault-claims-against-weinstein-shows-italys-deep-misogyny/] rounded up more victim-blaming accounts from various public figures. Art critic and politician Vittorio Sgarbi, who’s a friend to her former partner of seven years, the Italian musician Morgan, said, “I feel that he was raped by her” and that she was the “dominant” one in the relationship. Morgan himself, who is the father of her daughter, doubted her account, citing her silence on Weinstein over the past 20 years as evidence.

Some Italian women remain unsympathetic as well. Author and public commentator Selvaggia Lucarelli wrote that Weinstein's alleged actions were “horrendous but it is not sexual violence.” She added that it’s not “legitimate” to bring this story up 20 years later, and described the encounter as “consensual” and not “‘abuse.‘” (Weinstein has also maintained that he believes all of the sexual encounters detailed by his accusers were consensual.) Self-described feminist writer and former film critic for the national newspaper La Repubblica Natalia Aspesi even said that giving into Weinstein’s demands for a massage made it difficult to sympathize with the victims and called Argento’s act of coming clean with her story a “late lament.” This is what “annoys” her about Argento and other’s accounts:

The unrealistic, almost enchanted representation of these encounters. The monster on one side, the sacrificial lamb on the other. As I read, Weinstein did not give normal business appointments in the office with a desk to divide ambitions and intentions. He did not talk about scripts. He asked for massages. And if you ask for a massage and I massage you, then it's hard to be surprised at the evolution of events.”

The public recriminations are in stark opposition to the support shown across the U.S. and within Hollywood for Weinstein’s accusers. Even now, actress Jessica Chastain, who’s currently in Italy, tweeted her own horror at how Argento’s case is being understood in the country on Friday: