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I did handcuff male escort, says Boy George
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent01.12.08
Boy George admitted to the police that he had handcuffed a male escort to his bed and threatened him but "certainly wasn't going to kill him", a court heard today.
Jurors were played a recording of officers interviewing the ex-pop star after escort Audun Carlsen, 29, accused the 46-year-old of securing him to a bedroom wall and beating him with a metal chain.
The singer, who is on trial at Snaresbrook crown court under his real name George O'Dowd, told police in his interview how angry he was after Mr Carlsen allegedly tampered with his computer. O'Dowd said he handcuffed Mr Carlsen while he investigated.
He accused the Norwegian of obtaining photos of himself from the singer's laptop after a naked photoshoot with O'Dowd three months earlier.
"He was so smug and was lying, saying it wasn't me," he told police, describing a phone conversation he had with Mr Carlsen before the escort visited his Shoreditch flat for a second time, on 28 April last year.
"I asked him to come [back to my flat] because I wanted to find out if this guy had borrowed my stuff," O'Dowd said on the tape. "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 to police that he had punched or assaulted Mr Carlsen.
"He struggled a bit when I was [handcuffing him] because he realised I wasn't messing around," he said. "I didn't tell him the reason I was doing what I was doing. I said I just wanted to check something. He was saying 'let me go'."
O'Dowd denied to police that he had called Mr Carlsen a whore, saying: "My boyfriend is an escort. Why would I call him a whore?" He said in the interview that killing Mr Carlsen "wouldn't have done my career any good".
He also said he had tied up the escort on a previous occasion and hit him, but only with his consent. "You can't spank anyone if they don't want you to," he said. "Unless you want to get arrested."
O'Dowd also denied swinging a chain at Mr Carlsen as the escort fled the flat, and suggested bruises the Norwegian sustained could have been due to the fact that he was HIV positive.
"If I was going to beat him up I would have got my friend to beat him up with me, if I was going to do anything that vile." O'Dowd denies one count of false imprisonment. The case continues.
