Naomi Campbell charged with assaulting housekeeper

NEW YORK - Supermodel Naomi Campbell was arrested at her Park Avenue home on Thursday and charged with assaulting her housekeeper with a cell phone, New York City police said.


A police spokesman said Campbell had been charged with second degree assault for throwing a cell phone at housekeeper Ana Scolavino that struck her in the back of the head and opened a cut that needed four staples to close.


Campbell faces up to seven years in jail if convicted, the prosecutors office said.


Campbell, still one of the biggest names in fashion at the age of 35, was fingerprinted and photographed at a police station and arrived at the State courthouse ahead of her arraignment wearing a black baseball hat, a white fur poncho and sunglasses. Her hands were cuffed behind her back.


"The police have been really nice. They are treating me great," she told reporters.


Campbell's agent, Amanda Silverman, said in a statement: "We believe this is a case of retaliation, because Naomi had fired her housekeeper earlier this morning. We are confident the courts will see it the same way."


The model's lawyer, David Breitbart, said the maid had been working for Campbell for two to three months and was being fired because several items were missing from the house. "When this happened this morning, all hell broke loose," he said.


Breitbart said the maid's injury was self-inflicted.


It was not the first time the British-born Campbell has had troubles with the law -- in February 2000 she pleaded guilty in a Canadian court to assaulting her former assistant, and was given an absolute discharge, meaning her record was cleared.


After that incident, in which she assaulted her assistant Georgina Galanis with a telephone, she blamed her fiery temper on lingering resentment towards her father for abandoning her as a child.


Campbell, who grew up in South London, said that her father abandoned the family before she was born and her mother was often gone because she worked long hours to send her daughter to prestigious schools to study singing, drama and ballet.


"I've not always displayed my anger in the appropriate time," she said in a 2000 TV interview in which she said she had attended a US clinic to help manage her anger.


"It's a manifestation of a deeper issue, I think. And that, to me, I think is based on insecurity, self-esteem and loneliness."


Campbell has also admitted to drug use in the past. In 2004 she won a British court battle with a tabloid newspaper that was found to have invaded her privacy by running a story saying, correctly, that she had visited Narcotics Anonymous.


Spotted on the streets of London's Covent Garden when she was just 15, Campbell was the first black model to appear on the covers of the French and British editions of Vogue magazine.


Nearly 20 years later she remains one of the biggest names in fashion, sought after by the top designers to grace their shows in New York, Paris and Milan.


She has also acted in several movies, tried her hand at singing and launched her own cosmetics range. She has also published a ghostwritten novel called "Swan," about a supermodel who is blackmailed.


This marked the second time in a year that a celebrity was charged with using a phone in anger in New York. Actor Russell Crowe pleaded guilty last November to third-degree assault after admitting he threw a phone that hit a hotel concierge.


- REUTERS