A man has been arrested for allegedly vandalizing a controversial statue in the front of the BBC headquarters in London, using a sledgehammer.
Police were called at 4:15 GMT on Saturday to report that a man had climbed the building and damaged the statue of “Prospero and Ariel” by Eric Gill.
This is the second time the statue, which was carved in the 1930s, has been targeted. There were calls for it to be removed, because the sculptor admitted to sexually abusing his daughters in his memoirs.
The offender was brought down shortly after 6:00 pm GMT, according to what was confirmed by the BBC.
London police said he had been arrested on charges of committing and preparing criminal damage and was being held at police headquarters.
This comes after someone else’s hammer damaged the statue in January last year. Repair work is continuing for the damage that occurred during that accident.
Throughout Saturday, a man wearing a Spider-Man mask could be seen yelling erratically at officers on the ground, and footage emerged showing him striking the statue with a hammer and chisel.
A security cordon was placed around him and the police initially said that it was not possible to “safely detain the man given the circumstances of the accident, including his height” and that specialized officers were attending the incident.
The statue, which was placed outside the BBC headquarters in 1933, shows the characters Prospero and Ariel from the play “The Tempest” by the English writer, Shakespeare.
Born in 1882, Eric Gill became an influential artist whose career included numerous large sculptures on central London buildings, including Westminster Abbey and the original home of the London Underground.
Gill died in 1940, but a detailed autobiography was published in 1989 in which he described his sexual abuse of his two eldest daughters, an incestuous relationship with his sister, and sexual acts on his dog.
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2023-05-21 15:29:07
