Summary
A co-founder of clothing firm Superdry has been jailed for eight years after being convicted of raping a woman on a night out in Cheltenham. James Holder, 54, had gone back to the woman’s home, went to the toilet and then fell asleep on her bed snoring. The multi-millionaire fashion boss then woke up and beckoned the woman, who was trying to sleep in the lounge, into her bedroom and raped her.
Details
Holder, of Cheltenham, had denied charges of assault by penetration and rape and said what sexual activity took place between them was consensual. A jury acquitted Holder of assault by penetration but found him guilty of rape following a trial at Cirencester Courthouse He was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court today (Thursday, May 7) – exactly four years after the attack took place.
Holder’s trial heard the woman was attacked in the early hours of May 7 2022 after a night out at a bar in Cheltenham. He and a friend had gone back to her home uninvited, and he attacked her after waking from a short nap on her bed. Giving evidence, the woman said she was crying and asking the married father-of-two to stop but he carried on.
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The ordeal ended when she managed to escape the bedroom, and Holder left her home a short time later. The woman denied suggestions from Holder’s barrister that she had initiated the encounter. Recorder David Chidgey, sitting at Bristol Crown Court today, jailed Holder for eight years for the offence, describing it as “a despicable piece of sexual violence”.
The judge said: “It was about entitlement, it was about your sense of entitlement and your sense of doing what you wanted and your causal disregard for the victim’s absolute right to say what she wanted to do with her own body.” Holder, who appeared via video link from HMP Hewell wearing a grey sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, did not react as the sentence was passed.