Boy George gets 15 months for imprisoning male prostitute

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Boy George gets 15 months for imprisoning male prostitute

Postby delphyne » Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:02 am

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/1 ... ale-escort

Boy George gets 15 months for falsely imprisoning male escort
Singer accused victim of hacking into his computer before threatening him with whips and sex toys

Sam Jones and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 January 2009 14.51 GMT

Boy George was today sentenced to 15 months in jail for falsely imprisoning a male escort by handcuffing him to a wall and beating him with a metal chain.

The judge told the 47-year-old former Culture Club front man, whose real name is George O'Dowd, he had left the escort "shocked, degraded and traumatised" by the ordeal.

O'Dowd was found guilty last month of attacking the Norwegian model Audun Carlsen, 29, after he visited the singer's flat in London in April 2007.

Passing sentence at Snaresbrook crown court, east London, Judge David Radford said the singer's offence was "so serious that only an immediate sentence of imprisonment can be justified".

"Whilst I accept that Mr Carlsen's physical injuries were not serious or permanent, in my view there can be no doubt that your premeditated, callous and humiliating hand-cuffing and detention of Mr Carlsen shocked, degraded and traumatised." Carlsen, he added, had been "deprived of his liberty and his human dignity".

During O'Dowd's trial last month, the jury was told that he had invited Carlsen into his bedroom after a naked photo session, during which they took cocaine.

He then ambushed him together with the help of an unnamed man. Carlsen said the atmosphere changed when O'Dowd returned to the flat after ostensibly popping out to buy milk and cigarettes. The altercation apparently stemmed from O'Dowd's belief that Carlsen had attempted to hack into his computer.

O'Dowd told him: "Now you're going to get what you deserve." Carlsen said he was then beaten and handcuffed to a wall fixture. When O'Dowd returned to the room with a box of leather straps, chains and sex toys, he said: "Now you're going to get it."

Carlsen told the jury he only escaped after wrenching the fixture free, but was beaten with a chain by the singer as he fled into the street in Shoreditch, east London. In an apparently accidental allusion to Culture Club's 1982 No 1 hit Heather Norton, for the prosecution, asked the jury during the trial: "Did he really have to hurt him?"

In mitigation, Adrian Waterman QC, defending, told the court O'Dowd's long-term drug use had played a large part in attack, which he described as "truly bizarre". He said that O'Dowd had "genuinely believed" that Carlsen had stolen photographs from his computer.

Waterman also spoke of his client's "good character", describing O'Dowd as "the antithesis of the haughty and bullying star" who had got himself into "a world of paranoia". He assured the judge his client was now "on the way back from the nether world".

He went on: "There is something of an irony in that Mr Carlsen will make money out of this while the cost to the defendant is enormous. He will probably now never be permitted to perform in the United States or Japan, where he has an enormous - I believe the word is - fanbase. Not only will he lose the money but, more importantly, the chance to do what he loves."

However, suggesting some scepticism of that view, the judge said the singer "would have shown true remorse" had he pleaded guilty to the charges. O'Dowd met Carlsen on the dating website Gaydar in January 2007 and hired him as a photographic model.

During their first meeting – where Carlsen claimed O'Dowd had briefly given him oral sex – O'Dowd accused Carlsen of tampering with his computer. Carlsen said the singer appeared "wired" from cocaine.

O'Dowd did not give evidence during the trial, but the jury was told he admitted to police that he handcuffed Carlsen to his bed at his flat while he investigated alleged tampering with his computer.

He accused Carlsen of obtaining naked photos of himself, taken by O'Dowd when the pair met three months earlier, from his laptop, and denied assaulting the escort.

But the prosecution said that over the next few weeks O'Dowd bombarded the escort with "bizarre" and menacing emails accusing him of hacking into the computer, but later apologised, saying he wanted to spank Carlsen and asking for a second meeting.

O'Dowd told police: "I asked him to come [back to the flat] because I wanted to find out if this guy had borrowed my stuff. I got a friend there because I wanted to make sure he didn't leave so I could check the computer and his phone. The friend was just there in case he tried to stab me or take a hammer to me."

He denied punching Carlsen or swinging a chain at him as he escaped the flat, claiming that red welts on Carlsen's body could have been there because he was HIV positive.

The incident is the latest scandal surrounding the flamboyant pop star, whose difficulties with drug addiction have attracted intense tabloid coverage throughout his career. After his 1980s heyday, O'Dowd reinvented himself as a solo singer and, later, a nightclub DJ.

In 2005 he was arrested in New York on suspicion of possessing cocaine. The charge was dropped, but O'Dowd was given community service a year later after pleading guilty to falsely reporting a burglary at his New York apartment.
delphyne
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Re: Boy George gets 15 months for imprisoning male prostitute

Postby kellum » Sun Mar 01, 2009 10:19 pm

holy shit. i never heard this............
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