Graffiti of convicted sexual predator Bill Cosby has been taken down by the council, months after it was first reported to the local authority.
The comedian, 81, was sentenced to three to 10 years in jail for sexual assault by a judge in Pennsylvania earlier this week.
At a retrial in April, Cosby was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault for drugging and molesting Andrea Constand in 2004.
A sticker of Cosby featuring a small quote had been stuck on a wall in Aberdeen’s historic McCombie’s Court since at least the start of 2016. Earlier this summer a city councillor was assured by the local authority it would be taken down in light of the serious allegations raised against the disgraced TV star and stand-up comic.
However, a city council spokeswoman said it was only taken down yesterday.
Ferryhill and Torry councillor Catriona Mackenzie said the graffiti should never have been allowed to stay on the wall for so long.
She said: “This is the image and words of a criminal found guilty and jailed for multiple counts of sexual assault, and it should have been removed months ago when my colleague Michael Hutchison first raised it.
“I would have tried to claw the sticker off the wall myself if the council had taken any longer to sort this out.
“The words of a sex attacker should be confined to a prison cell, not our city’s walls, and it’s incredibly disappointing that it’s taken the council this long to remove it.”
And George Street and Harbour councillor Michael Hutchison said he told the council to remove the Cosby design earlier this year.
He said: “I will be asking questions as to why this took so long.
“I don’t want to see the walls of our city adorned with images of convicted sex offenders.”
A spokeswoman for Aberdeen City Council said: “The council’s operations and protective services removed this unauthorised poster yesterday.”
Who was Bill Cosby?
He began his career debuting on NBC’s The Tonight Show in 1963 as a stand-up comic.
He then rose to fame starring on numerous television shows before establishing himself as a household name with eight seasons of The Cosby Show, beginning in 1984.
More than 60 other women accused Cosby of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse and sexual misconduct after allegations began to emerge in 2014.
However, the statute of limitations – the time limit for the bringing of criminal charges – had by then expired in nearly all cases.
The jury found him guilty on all three counts of aggravated indecent assault against ex-basketball player Andrea Constand who claimed the comedian had molested her at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.
His name will now appear on a sex-offender registry sent to neighbours, schools and victims.
Cosby’s defence team had argued at court that given his age and the fact that he is legally blind, the designation was too severe a punishment and that the classification process was unconstitutional.
