Calum McSwiggan charged with faking anti-gay attack as YouTube star shares his side of the story

YouTube star Calum McSwiggan has been charged with one count of filing a false report of a criminal offence after claiming he was beaten by three men outside an LA gay club earlier this week.

The 26-year-old Londoner faces up to a year in prison after being charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office at an LA yesterday, The Advocate reports.

His next court appearance is scheduled for July 19.

McSwiggan posted a picture of himself lying in a hospital bed on Monday (June 28), alleging that he had been the victim of an anti-gay attack outside West Hollywood nightclub The Abbey.

“With three broken teeth and six stitches in my forehead, I’ve never felt so terrified to be a gay man in the public eye,” he wrote at the time, before accusing authorities of treating him “like a second class citizen” during the ordeal.

However, police confirmed yesterday that after responding to McSwiggan’s initial 911 call, they were unable to substantiate his claims as he had “no visible injuries”.

Instead, officers arrested him after they witnessed him vandalising a car. After being place in a cell in West Hollywood police station, officers say the say McSwiggan injure his face with a phone receiver, before taking him to hospital for treatment.

cal

In a lengthy post on Facebook following his court appearance yesterday, McSwiggan gave his own side of the story, confirming the police’s version of events, but insisting that he had been attacked beforehand and only injured himself in a bid to be moved from the police station to a hospital.

He claims the three attackers were responsible for breaking his teeth, and that he vandalised one of their cars in an moment of “blind rage”.

However, he admitted that he caused the injury to his forehead that required stitches “in a moment of desperation to get out of the [police] cell”.

“I took the pay phone off the wall and hit myself once across the forehead with it as hard as I could. I knew I had to injure myself to get out of the cell and into a hospital, and it was the only solution I could find to get myself out of there,” he wrote.

“Many people are trying to discredit my story but this is the full and entire truth,” he continued.

“I do not blame the individual police officers for what happened. They were just doing their jobs. I believe they genuinely believed I had not been attacked. I find it shocking, however, that there is not a system in place to protect victims.”

He adds: “Just because there were no visible marks on my face does not mean I was not attacked. Being accused of being a liar and being called a disgrace to the LGBT+ community, a community I’ve dedicated my life to, is more painful than any hate crime could ever be.”

Read his post in full below:

In This Article: