Boy George claims police report before alleged attack

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 in Britain heard today.

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, then of Stoke Newington police station, 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.

Under cross-examination, Detective Constable Foy said he had made no record of the content of the conversation he had with the singer in April 2007 until November this year.

He said he had written his case report relying on his memory of the conversation.

He told the jury it was “unusual” to speak to a celebrity and remembered the conversation “because Mr O’Dowd is Boy George”.

The policeman insisted the singer had “never mentioned it was anybody else” during their conversation.

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