YouTuber Calum McSwiggan saw an outpour of support after sharing a detailed account of his alleged assault in West Hollywood, but now police are calling him a liar.
The openly gay internet star claims three men attacked him after hitting up WeHo hotspot The Abbey, leaving him with three broken teeth and six stitches in his forehead. In the caption to a picture taken from the hospital, he added that authorities "treated me like a second class citizen."
However, authorities are claiming he made it all up and have since charged him with making a false police report. McSwiggan, who was arraigned on Wednesday, took to Facebook to clear his name. He also confessed to injuring himself on the head with a payphone receiver in his jail cell as a desperate attempt to get admitted to the hospital.
In a moment of desperation to get out of the 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. This is incredibly out of character for me and is testament to how upset I was in that moment. I do not regret doing this as I could still be in the jail cell if I didn't.
McSwiggan faces a maximum of 364 days in county jail if convicted.
