Boy George case escort 'can't be relied on'

A male escort who claims singer Boy George beat him after handcuffing him at his flat “can’t really be relied upon”, a jury was told today.

“I respectfully suggest you wouldn’t want to rely upon him,” said Adrian Waterman QC of escort Audun Carlsen, 29.

Mr Carlsen has accused the 46-year-old singer of handcuffing him to a bedroom wall and beating him with a metal chain.

Mr Waterman, in his closing speech at London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court, said a dispute between the two men was over Mr Carlsen’s alleged tampering with the computer of Boy George, who is being tried under his real name of George O’Dowd.

“The live issue was whether Audun Carlsen had stolen photographs and, in doing that, messed up George O’Dowd’s computer,” Mr Waterman said.

The suggestion that it was because Mr Carlsen had refused to have sex with O’Dowd on a previous occasion was “entire fantasy or a lie”, he added.

The court has heard that O’Dowd admitted to police that he handcuffed Mr Carlsen to his bed at his flat in Shoreditch, east London, on April 28 last year while he investigated the alleged tampering with the computer.

He accused the Norwegian of obtaining photos of himself from his laptop, taken by O’Dowd three months earlier in a naked photo shoot.

He denied to police that he had punched or assaulted Mr Carlsen or swung a chain at him as the escort fled the flat and suggested the bruises Mr Carlsen had sustained could have been due to the fact that he was HIV positive.

O’Dowd denies one count of false imprisonment.