Boy George Denies Escort Abuse

That’s what the former Culture Club singer said in London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court Dec. 1. The singer with the real name of George O’Dowd is on trial for the false imprisonment of 29-year-old Audun Carlsen.

O’Dowd says in a police recording played in the court that he asked Carlsen, an escort, to come to his apartment.

O’Dowd says he wanted to ask Carlsen if he had tampered with his laptop, but he did not assault the escort or swing at him with a chain.

Carlsen had told the court that he met the singer through a Web site and went to his London home for a naked photo shoot. After the encounter, O’Dowd sent a series of e-mails accusing Carlsen of hacking into his computer but Carlsen nonetheless agreed to return for a second photo session several weeks later in April 2007.

Carlsen told the jury that when he arrived, O’Dowd and another man held him down and beat him before the singer handcuffed him to a hook in the bedroom wall.

“George was slapping me and beating me and punching me and screaming things,” Carlsen told the court. He said he escaped by unscrewing the hook and running for the door.

“I took a bit of time getting the door open and he had a metal chain that he was hitting me with,” Carlsen said.

O’Dowd was ordered in 2006 to do community service with New York City’s Department of Sanitation after pleading guilty to filing a false report of a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment. The responding officers found cocaine inside.