Flamboyant singer Boy George, who was found guilty of falsely imprisoning a male escort in his east London flat in 2007, will be going to jail for 15 months.

Calling the 47-year-old singer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, “callous,” Judge David Radford said at his sentencing that he was guilty of “gratuitous violence,” adding that he “traumatized” his victim.

The 29-year-old Audun Carlsen accused O’Dowd of immobilizing him with handcuffs on their second meeting, while inside the singer’s east London flat. He also said O’Dowd beat him with a metal chain when he tried to escape after a naked photo shoot. He managed to flee the apartment in his underpants and alert police after the attack in April 2007.

Boy George strongly denied the charge and claimed the victim had stolen photos from his laptop, but admitted to handcuffing Carlsen although he never meant to harm him. He insisted he just wanted to check his laptop.

“I certainly wasn’t going to kill him, that’s hardly going to do my career any good is it?” the former Culture Club singer told police.

Rejecting O’Dowd’s accusation, Carlsen told the court that Boy George made up the story about computer tampering so he could punish him for not having sex.

This isn’t Boy George’s first run-in with the law. Before the escort incident, he was sentenced to do community service with New York City's Department of Sanitation after alerting police with a false report of a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment, where officers found cocaine.