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The contrite model

Edward Helmore

Naomi Campbell has her day in court

New York: In keeping with the dictates of fashion, Naomi Campbell arrived at Manhattan criminal court a little later than the appointed time of 9.30 a.m. to plead guilty to assaulting her housekeeper with a mobile phone. In large dark glasses and sporting high heels, the supermodel said nothing but looked sombre and chaste. 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 Ms. 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 statement to the judge, she said: "During the morning of March 30, 2006 I threw a cell phone in the apartment. The cell phone hit Ana. I did not intend to hit her... and I am sorry about that."

Ms. Campbell was quickly sentenced to community service, fined $363.32 and ordered to attend anger management classes. She was then led out of court, taken to give a DNA sample and marched down a long hallway 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 Ms. 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 Campbell should serve her time indoors in a public institution.

If she is ordered to a hospital she will help to empty bedpans and change sheets; if she goes to a school, she will probably be ordered to help monitor children in the playground or help with schoolwork.

Ms. Campbell tried to give a statement after the leaving the court but quickly gave up amid a crush of press and photographers, her bodyguards, the size of American footballers, overwhelmed by the numbers. In the statement, 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."

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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