My beneficiant landlord was a ‘teddy bear’ and a pillar of the group as a Tory councillor – till a horrifying discovery I made within the toilet uncovered his wicked secret

The victims of a ‘depraved’ landlord who spent 14 years secretly filming his lodgers have opened up about their horror at learning they were living alongside the sick pervert.

Speaking in a new Channel 5 documentary, which airs on Thursday, victims detailed how they discovered they had been filmed by ‘peeping Tom’ Robert Holden – who was also a Tory councillor for the area.

Holden, 51, served as Conservative councillor for Ryburn on Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire and was considered a local hero to those in the community – until allegations emerged that he had been secretly spying on people.

The politician lived in a sprawling house called Row Farm and was known for having people lodge with him while they were in between homes.

But little did his lodgers know that the house was kitted out with surveillance and Holden’s eye was on them all the time. In 2020, the police discovered he’d hidden cameras in his bathroom and bedroom and recorded 29 people, including 27 women, as they showered, changed their clothes and even had sex.

Holden was first arrested in 2022 but failed to show up to court, before police  discovered he had fled the country to Cape Verde, where he remained for the next 17 months.

However when he finally had his day in court, Holden pleaded guilty to 31 charges of voyeurism and seven for computer misuse between the years of 2006 and 2020. 

Speaking in the documentary, one of his victims, Heidi, recounted how she went from living with someone she believed was a trusted ‘friend’ to the horrifying discovery that he had been secretly spying on her in the bathroom for months.

Heidi recalled reaching out to Holden after seeing an advert for a bedroom on Facebook.

She knew him as a family friend and even said she saw him as ‘an uncle’, adding that he would ‘go above and beyond for everyone’.

The seemingly all-generous landlord then offered her a room for free to help her ‘get back on [her] feet’. 

She described him as having a ‘calm temperament’ and said she got on well with him when she first moved in. 

‘I let out my heart and soul to him and really felt like he was that shoulder to cry on but also someone that I could trust and depend upon – I enjoyed living there.’

But she began to grow suspicious when his behaviour towards her took an uncomfortable turn.

When the two would go out together, Holden would behave as though Heidi was his ‘partner’. 

Local councillor Alex Greenwood recalled meeting Heidi for the first time and immediately being struck by how cosy she and Holden seemed. ‘He was looking like the cat had got the cream,’ she said.

‘Both his posts and the pictures that he posted, he was presenting a narrative that Heidi was his partner.’

Heidi said Holden would become ‘upset’ if people ever perceived them as ‘father and daughter’, leading her to feel like there ‘was something wrong’. 

‘I sensed that there were eyes watching me.’ 

After six months of living with Holden, Heidi began to feel ‘suffocated’ but said she didn’t have the ‘courage’ to tell him he was making her feel uncomfortable.

Holden repeatedly told her she had ‘saved’ him and encouraged her not to look for a her own property.

She recalled one evening where Holden had been drinking and started making ‘inappropriate comments’, begging her to take him to bed, complimenting her breasts and saying the two should ‘have babies’. 

He then hugged her, pushing himself up against her chest and making her feel ‘really uncomfortable’. The incident was so affecting that she stopped interacting with him in the communal spaces.

Speaking about Heidi’s ordeal, her best friend Paul Wormwell recalled being ‘afraid for her life’, when she was living with him. 

At one stage, Heidi downloaded a dating app which stirred an overwhelming reaction of jealousy from Holden.

After receiving a jealous text from him while on a date, she quickly realised that Holden had been tracking her location on Find My Friends via her laptop – which he had set up for her.

When she confronted him, he immediately backtracked and stormed out of the room, which left Heidi convinced Holden was tracking her whereabouts. 

On the advice of a relative who worked for the police, Heidi went searching for cameras but couldn’t initially find any.

‘I suddenly remembered there was an alarm sensor in the bathroom that I had always found strange.’

Heidi knew she had to get the the bottom of Holden’s creepy behaviour and decided to investigate the sensor, prizing it open with a knife.

It was there that she discovered a device that appeared to be a camera. She then went online to search the product’s serial number where she found a device online being advertised as a ‘hidden camera with no red light so it doesn’t alert the person being filmed’.

‘I instantly just felt so upset and physically sick,’ she said, tearing up as she recalled the discovery.

Heidi contacted West Yorkshire police and they arrived to take Holden away. Despite knowing he had been watching her all along, she was struck by how ‘guilty’ she felt, still in total disbelief that the ‘teddy bear’ she knew could do something so sick.

The next day, she was ordered to take her things from the house. When she arrived, she discovered a full police investigation was underway at Row Farm. 

There, the police found another camera in the bedroom – both of which were connected to a digital recording camera which was set to film for 24 hours a day.

Further investigation led Heidi to the discovery that the camera had gone out of production in 2017, meaning she had likely been living under Holden’s watch for entire duration of her stay at Row Farm. 

‘I realised that it wasn’t put there for me,’ she said. ‘There was a very high probability that there was a lot of victims in this case.’

Heidi said she was ‘consumed’ by anxiety after the arrest was made and began to fear seeing Holden everywhere she went. She said she even had cameras installed around her house to make her feel safer.

But it was ‘anger’ that pushed her forward and led her to look into the other people to have lived with Holden.

Police suggested Holden had had an ‘infatuation’ with Heidi but she was convinced there were more victims out there. ‘I knew there were more people than just me.’

Her online investigations led her to Melanie, who had lived with Holden in 2015 after her house was destroyed by flooding.

Holden became a reputable figure in the area after being heavily involved in putting up flood defences for Hebden Bridge.

In 2015, the area faced some of the worst flooding it had even seen, forcing dozens of people out of their homes – including Melanie who had been left with ‘nothing’.

Believing him to be a local hero, she then moved into his sprawling farmhouse after the ‘kind’ councillor offered to put her up for free until she was back on her feet.

Initially, Melanie felt like she’d won the lottery. She said Holden was ‘hardly ever there’ and she began to relax into her new surroundings.

But things quickly took a turn when she noted ‘awkward things started happening’.

She recalled offering to make him cups of tea when she was making one for herself and how Holden would ‘say things like we’d done it as a couple instead of just a kind thing to do.’

Holden had expectations that his tenants treat each other as a ‘family’, with Melanie feeling as though he thought of them as ‘a couple’. 

But he had never ‘made a pass’ at her, and she didn’t believe Heidi when it was first suggested that she may also have been a victim of Holden’s perversions – but then she saw images he filmed that appeared to be of her walking around in a towel, getting into the bath and getting changed. 

‘He made me a victim when I’d already lost everything I owned. He took advantage,’ she said.

‘Thank god for Heidi because how long would that go on for? He got away with it for 20-years, it would have carried on for another 20. Who actually is Rob? Everything was fake, I wish I’d never met him,’ she said.

Heidi noted that all of of Holden’s victims happened to be ‘vulnerable’ people. 

They were all ‘single mums, had just come out of a relationship or lost their home and then comes as a night in shining armour – that seemed to be the recurring pattern.’

Another victim described the horror of discovering that the person they thought was their ‘rock’, was really filming them in private.

Holden was a well-known local politician and had worked on both the parish and borough council for the Conservative party.

Alongside his work in local politics, Holden also owned a computer shop – which has since closed down.

Speaking in the documentary, Peter Hunt, a fellow local councillor, recalled a ‘cheerful, bubbly chap who couldn’t have been a nicer fella.’

‘He came across as a safe guy in a world of sharks.’ 

Paul Bellenger, another coucillor, said ‘Rob would do anything’ for the area. 

At the time of Holden’s arrest, councillors were informed about what had happened – but they were banned from discussing the trial in case they prejudiced its outcome. 

But it didn’t stop Holden from posting on social media himself, where he claimed he was suffering mental health issues and had been hospitalised after an attempt at taking his own life.

Heidi found the ordeal ‘extremely hurtful’ because she had been prohibited from posting alone.

But as the months passed and the police still had Holden’s devices in custody, a growing number of people began to believe Heidi.

‘That’s when the penny dropped,’ Peter Hunt said as public trust began to wane.

Police evidence uncovered 29 separate victims of Holden.

Over a period spanning more than a decade, the pervert had filmed tens of people using secret cameras in his home.

But when it came to his day in court, it was revealed that he was out of the country, much to the horror of his victims.

‘In his mind, he was not guilty, he’d not done anything wrong and it was all a pack of lies. We were concerned he was going to do everything in his power to stay where he was,’ said one victim.

But Heidi said she ‘never let go’ of the thought that Holden would be back and have to face justice for his crimes. 

Finally after 17 months, the prolific peeping tom was brought back to the UK where he pleaded guilty to his crimes in November 2023, meaning Holden was never forced to face trial.

In September 2024, he was sentenced to six years and two months in jail. Holden was also placed on the sexual harm register for life, meaning he will never be able to contact any of his victims.

He was also placed on the sexual offenders register. 

He was also charged with computer misuse offences after downloading images from people who had trusted him with their devices – something he managed to carry out freely while working at the computer shop.