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Loading ...Boy George sent to prison in gay hustler case
01.19.2009 1:35pm EST
(London) Singer Boy George has been sentenced to 15 months behind bars for false imprisonment involving a gay escort.
The openly gay former Culture Club singer was sentenced under his real name, George O’Dowd.His attorney, Adrian Waterman, had argued for a suspended sentence. Waterman said that O’Dowd, 47, and 29-year-old Audun Carlsen were behaving like “drug-crazed idiots” but when the singer was sober, he was “a kind and generous man” and that “there is no shortage of people to help him through his recovery.”
Judge David Radford disagreed. “This is a case where custody is the more likely option,” he said, passing sentence on Friday.
During the trial, the court was told that O’Dowd met Carlsen on a gay internet site and agreed to meet at the singer’s home where Carlsen was to pose for a naked photo shoot.
The two men later exchanged emails, and at one point O’Dowd accused Carlsen of hacking into his computer and stealing the photos. Nevertheless, O’Dowd invited Carlsen to another photo shoot at his home.
It was a plot to exact revenge, the prosecution said, for what O’Dowd believed was theft of the original pictures.
After O’Dowd had taken several photos of Carlsen, the performer invited the younger man into his bedroom.
When Carlsen entered the room, he realized a second man had joined O’Dowd.
O’Dowd has refused to name the other man, prosecutor Heather Norton said.
Carlsen was forced to the floor. “Mr. O’Dowd produced a set of handcuffs. They placed one end on Mr Carlsen’s right wrist and the other end was placed through a hook that was screwed to a fixture near the bed,” Norton told the court during last month’s trial.
She said that Carlsen, “was frightened, shaking and crying. His fear increased when Mr O’Dowd returned into the room carrying with him a box.”
The box, said Norton, contained chains and leather straps.
Carlsen managed to free himself by pulling a hook the handcuffs were attached to from the wall. He escaped through a window clad in only his underwear and called police from a local news vendor’s stand.
O’Dowd did not testify on his own behalf, but the court. In a transcript of a police interrogation O’Dowd admitted he handcuffed Carlsen but denied punching or assaulting the hustler.
The performer’s attorney suggested that bruises Carlsen had could have been due to the fact that he was HIV positive.
It was the latest brush O’Dowd has had with the law.
In 2006, a judge in New York City sentenced him to five days of community service after being convicted of filing a false police report.
The singer had called police in October 2005 with a bogus report of a burglary by a male prostitute at his lower Manhattan apartment. When police went to investigate they found cocaine inside.
He was originally charged with drug offenses but under an agreement with prosecutors he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges and worked off his sentence picking garbage.
“Openly gay” is a poisonous and outdated phrase – to be gay is to be open. When was the last time you heard ‘openly black’, ‘openly female’, or ‘openly catholic’? Gay is the identity we chose in our communitiies, our workplaces and our families. You can be homosexual in secret, but not gay. Gay is always out in the open.
Okay,the “boy” deserves everything he gets.
He’s is a freak and I’m embarrassed that he’s gay! He gives gay people a bad name!
We have enough to contend with,without adding this to out problems!
Are you kidding me? Bruises from HIV?? An assumption by an attorney who is obviously an idiot!! Surely there was a struggle, and let’s not rule out how climbing out a window in handcuffs surely produces bruising. I can attest to the fact that, having been HIV+ myself for 20 years, that I don’t bruise any more easily than the next guy. I think it’s a sad attempt at taking the attention away from Mr. O’Dowd’s stupidity, and an insult to HIV+ people everywhere. I didn’t read anything that said the hustler ADMITTED to being positive. Sheesh!
Boy George will come and Boy George will go. Today’s newborns will have no knowledge about Boy George and he won’t matter to them for quite a while, unless an effort is made to introduce him to the new wave of young folk. By the time they are 18 Boy George will likely be dead of a drug overdose or his health might be in very serious decline. By then he will have been long since replaced by a new up and coming “pop culture idol”. He is like the rest of us just a mere blip on the screen of life of the human race, here today and gone tomorrow and replaceable.
After reading about him, I am not impressed. He is another performer for whom riches and fame failed to bring happiness. His drug use and brushes with the law are not a sign of a happy man.
This sounds like a gay first date, not prison worthy, surely. Men have been doing this to women for years, it’s called marriage. Didn’t anyone read B George’s bio? You don’t F with the lead singer of culture club.
Funny how female hustlers are mutilated every day… but this one is male so his situation is fostered in the court system. It’s so sweet.