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Naomi Campbell will have to take a break from her whirlwind schedule of fashion shows to complete five days of menial work in New York after being sentenced yesterday to perform community service for hurling a mobile phone at her maid.

The London-born model could find herself cleaning bedpans in a hospital or filing in a local government office after she pleaded guilty to a charge of reckless assault.

The judge recommended that she serve her sentence indoors, so she is likely to avoid the humiliating punishment of Boy George, the former singer with Culture Club, who was forced to sweep the streets to settle drug charges in New York.

Campbell, 36, clad in a charcoal Louis Vuitton jacket and a stretch black dress by Rachel Roy, tiptoed into Manhattan Criminal Court to admit the crime and offer an apology to her Chilean-born former maid, Ana Scolavino, who needed four stitches in her head.

“During the morning of March 30, 2006, I threw a cell phone in the apartment. The cell phone hit Ana. That was an accident because I did not intend to hit her,” she told the judge. “I am advised that Ana was hurt, and I am sorry about that.”

Campbell allegedly became enraged when Ms Scolavino lost a pair of designer jeans that she planned to wear on the Oprah Winfrey television talk show, accusing the maid of stealing them.

Judge Robert Mandelbaum told the model that she would have to spend two days in an “anger management” programme. She was ordered to pay $363.32 (£185) to reimburse medical expenses incurred by Ms Scolavino.

After the ruling was delivered, Campbell walked across the hallway surrounded by four beefy bodyguards to have a swab of DNA taken from inside her cheek for police records.

Campbell leapt to prominence in the late 1980s when she became the first black model to appear on the cover of the French and British editions of Vogue. Over the years, she has been linked to such celebrities as Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Clayton, the bassist with U2.

The guilty plea marked her first criminal conviction, despite other tangles with the courts. In 2000 a Canadian court gave her an absolute discharge after she pleaded guilty to threatening to throw an assistant out of a moving car. She agreed to attend anger management classes.

Campbell is believed to have settled a claim by an friend in Italy, Yvonne Scio, an actress who said that she was beaten up in the five-star Hotel Eden in Rome. She is currently being sued in New York by another former employee, Amanda Brack, who claims that the model abused her verbally and physically.

David Breitbart, Campbell’s lawyer, said he expected that Ms Scolavino would now claim damages. The court’s ruling followed months of negotiations between Mr Breitbart and prosecutors who were determined not to be soft on a celebrity.

In court, Mr Breitbart asked the judge to allow Campbell up to 120 days to fulfil her community service because of fashion commitments. He said that after modelling at the New York Fashion Week next month she was due to travel to California and Brazil and then appear in fashion week events in London, Paris and Milan.

In a meeting with court officials, Ms Campbell received a date in March to turn up for duty. Mr Breitbart said that she did not yet know what community service she would have to perform.

Mobbed by photographers as she left the court, Campbell abandoned a plan to issue a public apology to Ms Scolavino. The model’s publicist later released the statement. It read: “I pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour in court today. That’s the best way I know to say I’m sorry to Ana. I accepted responsibility and I’m prepared to take my punishment.”

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