US: In keeping with the dictates of fashion, Naomi Campbell arrived at Manhattan criminal court a little later than the appointed time of 9.30am to plead guilty to assaulting her housekeeper with a mobile phone.
Sporting large dark glasses and high heels, the supermodel said nothing but looked sombre. Wearing a Louis Vuitton jacket and Rachel Roy skirt, and attended by three handmaidens, three bodyguards, her lawyers and a publicist, she cut a glamorous swath up the steps to the court.
Inside, prosecutors accepted Campbell's guilty plea to a reduced charge of assault in the third degree, a misdemeanour for which she will serve five days' community service. In court documents, prosecutors said she threw a phone at maid Ana Scolavino during a dispute over a pair of jeans. The phone hit the woman in the back of her head, opening a wound that required four staples.
In a short statement to the judge, she said: "During the morning of March 30th, 2006 I threw a cellphone in the apartment. The cellphone hit Ana. I did not intend to hit her . . . and I am sorry about that."
Campbell was sentenced to community service, fined $363.32 (€281) and ordered to attend anger management classes. She was then led out of court, taken to give a DNA sample and brought to meet community service officers who will ensure her sentence is completed when she reports back - after the spring round of fashion shows - in March.
It remains unclear what kind of service Campbell will be required to do. Fearing a repeat of the chaos that surrounded former Culture Club singer Boy George last year when he swept the streets of the Lower East Side after a conviction on drug charges, prosecutors are likely to agree that she should serve her time indoors in a public institution.
If she goes to a hospital she will help empty bedpans and change sheets; if she goes to a school, she will probably help monitor children in the playground or help with schoolwork.
Campbell tried to give a statement after leaving the court but quickly gave up amid a crush of press and photographers.
In a statement offered subsequently by publicist Howard Bragman, she sought to draw a line under the affair: "I pled guilty to a misdemeanour today. That's the best way I know to say sorry to Ana. I have accepted responsibility and I'm prepared to take my punishment, but I'm not going to let this incident define me. The past is the past, the future holds great things and I'm getting on with my life."
Her lawyer David Breitbart said Campbell admitted to throwing a phone that had accidentally hit her maid, but not to throwing a phone at her maid. He accepted the court's decision to send her to anger management classes.
Mr Breitbart said he now fully expected Campbell to be sued for damages by Ms Scolavino, possibly adding to the bills she faces for her notorious tirades. - (Guardian service)