Edinburgh Festival rapist stripped of OBE

A former aide to Tony Blair and John Major who raped a teenager during the Edinburgh Festival has been stripped of his OBE.

Rapist: Mark Adams

Mark Adams, a Downing Street as a private secretary for six years, received the honour in 1997 for services to public life.

The 57-year-old was later exposed as a sexual predator and was already serving seven years for rape when he was convicted of attacking a 19-year-oldin Edinburgh,

In March last year, the High Court in Edinburgh heard that the teenager woke to find Adams raping her in the back of his camper van in a city street in August 2017. He was jailed for seven years in addition to the sentence he was already serving for raping a woman at his house in London in 2015.

The Gazette, the UK's official public record, confirmed he had been stripped of his honour in a notice.

It stated: "The Queen had directed that the appointment of Mark Robert Adams to be an Officer of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, dated August 2, 1997, shall be cancelled and annulled and that his name shall be erased for the register of the said order."

Adams originally claimed he had consensual sex with the victim in Edinburgh but later accepted he had raped her.

The court heard she had been drunk and unsteady after she returned from a night out at a Festival Fringe event when she encountered Adams in the city’s Regent Street.

Adams bundled her into his camper van, which was parked in the street, and raped her when she fell asleep.

Lord Armstrong, who sentenced Adams at the High Court in Glasgow, told him: "You took advantage of a vulnerable woman in a calculated and manipulative manner when she was alone and making her way through the streets of Edinburgh.

"A victim impact statement makes it clear your actions have had a devastating and detrimental effect on her.

Last January Adams was jailed for raping a 24-year-old woman as she slept on a sofa at his house near Blackheath, southeast London in 2015. In 2018 he was convicted of sexual assault in a Welsh court.

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