(Image source from: Rediff.com)

Comic legend Bill Cosby on Tuesday was hand locked and sentenced to 3 to 10 years for sexually assaulting a woman 14 years ago at his Philadelphia mansion.

The 81-year-old, once beloved father figure and moralizing African-American cultural icon, is the first celebrity convicted and sentenced for a sexual assault since the fall of Harvey Weinstein ushered in the #MeToo movement and America's reckoning with sexual harassment.

Earlier in April Cosby was found guilty of drugging and molesting a former university basketball administrator Andrea Constand.

He was deadpan when Judge Steven O'Neill handed down the sentence in Norristown, Pennsylvania. In his ruling, the judge rejected a defense request to release Cosby on bail pending an appeal.

It makes him one of the famed Americans ever sent to prison in a country where fame, wealth and expensive attorneys have tended to help famous personalities avoid the full arm of the law in the past.

"You were convicted of a very serious crime," O'Neill told Cosby. "No one is above the law."

According to his sentence, Cosby can apply for parole after three years and his requests will be reviewed by a special committee and can be rejected up to a maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars.

O'Neill as well branded Cosby a "sexually violent predator," a demeaning appellation that will force him to register with police for the rest of his life and to submit to compulsory counseling.

Prosecutors had demanded five to 10 years, after the three counts of intense indecent assault were merged into one, saving him from a theoretical maximum sentence of 30 years.

About 60 women, many of them former aspiring actresses and models, have in public branded Cosby as a calculating, serial predator who plied victims with sedatives and alcohol to bed them over four decades.

A lengthy and tearful press conference was held by several of his accusers hailing his imprisonment, saying they were ultimately able to turn the page on years of horrid memories.

"Today I feel a victory in my heart and my soul," said Sarita Butterfield, a onetime Playboy Playmate who accuses Cosby of raping her in 1978 in a house in Massachusetts where he was staying with his family

Sunni Welles, 70, said Cosby drugged and raped her twice in 1965, destroying "very much a part of my life" and paid tribute to Constand, the sole one whose assertions were latest enough to be prosecuted.

"If she hadn't been able to stand in court, we wouldn't be standing here today," Welles said.

Defense attorneys wanted Cosby confined to house arrest, as he has been since his conviction, arguing that he is too aged and too frail - the actor says he is legally blind - to endure a correctional facility.

"It's been a long time coming, but today, justice has been served," chief prosecutor Kevin Steele told reporters.

"Finally, Bill Cosby has been unmasked and we have seen the real man as he is headed off to prison."

At one time an eminent figure in late 20th century American popular culture and the first black actor to grace primetime United States television, Cosby was a hero especially among African Americans for decades.

He declined to testify in court or bring forth any witnesses to emphasize past years of philanthropic work as mitigating circumstances in his favor.

"Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it. He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature and my trust in myself and others," Constand wrote in a five-page impact statement.

"I'm a middle-aged woman who's been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward."

By Sowmya Sangam