Superdry co-founder jailed for rape after employee says he was her boss

James Holder was jailed for eight years after a jury convicted the Superdry co-founder of raping a woman who said she worked for him and had to face him again days after the attack. The verdict at Gloucester Crown Court came after a five-day trial, and the jury acquitted Holder of assault by penetration before he was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court and remanded in custody.

The court heard that the assault took place in the early hours of 7 May 2022 after a night out in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Holder, who is from Cheltenham, and a friend got into the same taxi as the victim and followed her into her flat. The Crown Prosecution Service said the woman had not invited the men to her home, and that Holder later fell asleep on her bed before raping her.

The woman’s account places the attack inside a workplace power imbalance that extended beyond the night itself. She said she worked for Holder and was forced to see him again days after he attacked her, a detail that gives the case wider force than the criminal conviction alone. Holder was one of the founders of Superdry, launched in Cheltenham in 2003 with Julian Dunkerton, after the business had grown out of the market-stall clothing trade into a major British fashion label.

Superdry said the offence for which Holder was convicted related to an event in 2022, long after any role with the company had ended, and that it did not involve Superdry, its premises, employees or business activity. The company history remains tied to Cheltenham, where Julian Dunkerton and a former business partner had earlier founded Cult Clothing in 1985 before Holder joined Dunkerton in creating Superdry. Holder’s conviction now leaves one of the brand’s best-known founders facing an eight-year sentence for what the judge described as a despicable piece of sexual violence.