Boy George, the 47-year-old former Culture Club frontman whose real name is George O'Dowd, was today sentenced to 15 months in prison for falsely imprisoning a male escort. The judge at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London described the offence as 'so serious that only an immediate sentence of imprisonment can be justified'.
O'Dowd was found guilty last month of attacking Norwegian model Audun Carlsen, 29, after he visited the singer's flat in London in April 2007. The court heard that O'Dowd handcuffed Carlsen to a wall fixture and beat him with a metal chain, leaving him 'shocked, degraded and traumatised'.
During the trial, the jury was told that O'Dowd invited Carlsen into his bedroom after a naked photo session, during which they took cocaine. The altercation 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 escaped by wrenching the fixture free but was beaten with a chain as he fled into the street.
In mitigation, Adrian Waterman QC said O'Dowd's long-term drug use played a large part in the attack, which he described as 'truly bizarre'. He said O'Dowd had 'genuinely believed' that Carlsen had stolen photographs from his computer and assured the judge his client was now 'on the way back from the nether world'. However, the judge noted that O'Dowd 'would have shown true remorse' had he pleaded guilty.
O'Dowd met Carlsen on the dating website Gaydar in January 2007 and hired him as a photographic model. During their first meeting, O'Dowd accused Carlsen of tampering with his computer. O'Dowd did not give evidence but admitted to police that he handcuffed Carlsen to his bed while he investigated alleged tampering. He denied assaulting the escort, claiming red welts on Carlsen's body could have been due to his HIV positive status.
