Superdry co-founder James Holder found guilty of rape | UK | News
James Holder, co-founder of clothing company Superdry (Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)
The co-founder of clothing company Superdry has been found guilty of raping a woman after a night out drinking. James Holder, 54, went to the woman’s home, went to the bathroom and immediately fell asleep in her bed.
The multimillionaire fashion mogul then woke up and called the woman, who was trying to sleep in the living room, into his bedroom and raped her. Holder denied the accusations of assault and rape by penetration and said the sexual activity between them was consensual. A jury at Gloucester Crown Court in Cirencester acquitted Holder of assault by penetration but found him guilty of rape.
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The court heard the woman was attacked following a night out at a bar in Cheltenham in the early hours of May 7, 2022.
Holder and a friend returned to his home uninvited and attacked him after he woke up from a short sleep in his bed.
The woman who testified said she was crying and asked him to stop, but he continued.
The ordeal ended with him managing to escape from the bedroom, and Holder left his home a short time later.
The woman denied Holder’s lawyer’s claims that she initiated the encounter.
“He forced me to perform oral sex on him,” she said.
Michelle Heeley KC, defending, said: “The sex lasted about 20 minutes.”
The woman replied: “I call that rape.”
Ms Heeley suggested: “Was this a drunken sexual encounter that you regret?”
He replied: “Wrong.”
The businessman and philanthropist was “old-fashioned and chivalrous” towards women and “admired sex”, the court heard.
She told the jury he kissed her first and “it was obvious what he wanted to happen”.
“We walked to the bedroom about a minute away… and started kissing again,” she said.
He told the court the complainant performed oral sex on him before moving on to consensual sex, but stopped when he said it had become painful.
“At no time did I see or hear her cry,” he said.
Asked shortly afterwards why he left the flat, Holder replied: “I had been out much longer than I expected and needed to get home. I let myself out. He was in bed asleep.”
On cross-examination, Holder denied going to the woman’s home because he “saw an opportunity to have sex with her.”
Prosecutor James Haskell asked: “You saw something you wanted and you took it, because the truth is, when you got to the living room door you said something like: ‘What’s going on, is everything okay?’ You wanted to coax him into the bedroom, so you said: ‘Can you show me?’
“It ended because he managed to escape from the bed.”
Holder replied: “That’s not true. He fell asleep immediately. He fell into a deep sleep, so I put on my clothes and left.”
Mr Haskell asked: “Did the reality of what you had just done suddenly come to your mind and you wanted to get out of the flat as quickly as possible?”
Holder replied: “No, that’s not true.”
The defendant, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was remanded in custody before sentencing.
