Boy George 'made police complaint'

27 November 2008 03:07pm

Boy George made an official complaint to police that personal data had been taken from his computer just days before he attacked a male escort who he thought had tampered with his laptop, a court has heard.

The singer allegedly handcuffed 29-year-old Audun Carlsen to a wall in his house and beat him with a metal chain, thinking the Norwegian had taken information from his computer during a naked photo shoot three months earlier.

But when the 47-year-old reported the crime to police he said "nothing at all" about any suspicions he had about the escort, a policeman told Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Instead he reported that a former employee had broken into his computer and taken personal information and photographs from it.

Detective Constable Matthew Foy said the singer, who is appearing under his real name of George O'Dowd, only gave one name in relation to the allegation.

"He told me that photographs had been stolen from his computer by an ex-employee," he told the jury. "He said the employee had worked for him and may have seen him type his password in to the computer."

But Boy George's lawyer Adrian Waterman QC suggested that the singer had named the employee as only one of several possible suspects and that the policeman was "piecing together" what had happened.

Boy George denies one count of forcibly imprisoning Carlsen on April 28 last year.

© The Press Association