Cofounder of British fashion brand Superdry sentenced to 8 years in prison for rape

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LONDON (AP) — The cofounder of the British fashion brand Superdry was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison for raping a woman following a night of drinking.

James Holder, 54, was found guilty by a jury in Gloucester Crown Court in the west of England last week of one count of rape but acquitted of a separate charge of assault by penetration in the May 2022 assault.

The accuser said Holder got in her taxi and entered her home uninvited after they had been at a bar in Cheltenham. She said he assaulted her after he awoke from a short nap. She testified that she cried as he carried on despite her pleas to stop.

Holder, a married father of two, denied the charges, and said all sexual activity had been consensual.

Judge David Chidgey, sitting at Bristol Crown Court in the west of England, described the offense as “a despicable piece of sexual violence."

“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," he said.

Holder, who appeared via video link from Hewell prison wearing a grey sweatshirt and jogging pants, did not react as the sentence was passed.