TO the outside world Rob Holden was a pillar of the local community and a knight in shining armour who would do anything to help anyone.
But behind closed doors the popular local councillor was a peeping Tom, a prolific sex offender who over 15 years secretly filmed dozens of women bathing, undressing and even having sex for his own perverted pleasure.
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Holden, a Tory councillor in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, and owner of the local computer shop, used his reputation and good standing to play the Good Samaritan – offering rooms on the cheap to vulnerable women who thought they could trust him.
But he betrayed this trust to use hidden cameras and secretly record the women at his rural farmhouse in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire.
And he also conned his customers – using the time he took to repair their phones and laptops to download any indecent images he could find.
He was eventually undone by his final victim, 27-year-old Heidi Marney.
Consumed by a sense of being watched from the day she moved in, she eventually discovered his hidden camera and went on a relentless campaign to find and alert women who had stayed with him.
With his reputation in tatters, brazen Holden then tried to gaslight the whole town into thinking it was he, not Heidi, who was the true victim, and fled the country to Cape Verde in a bid to escape justice.
Heidi, who has bravely waived her right to anonymity for Channel 5 documentary Peeping Tom: The Landlord and His Secret Cameras, now wants to raise awareness that adults can be groomed too.
She tells The Sun: “I just want to make sure women follow their gut feeling and don’t ignore it. Even if you care for that person, trust yourself, trust your intuition.
“When he fled the country to Cape Verde he just wasn’t taking any responsibility whatsoever. I just thought how dare you?”
But the backlash from Holden’s local supporters meant Heidi was left feeling GUILTY for shopping him.
“When it all happened I was heartbroken,” she says
“I thought I’d ruined his life, ruined his reputation, how is he ever going to come back from this? I had so much guilt for how I’d impacted him, and then I slowly realised he doesn’t care about me at all, he wasn’t remorseful.”
Kind-hearted ‘uncle’
Back in 2019 Heidi had split up with her partner and was looking for somewhere to live. She saw that family friend Rob Holden was advertising for a lodger and got in touch.
He immediately said Heidi could move in with him for free. “I wasn’t blood related to him but I saw him as an uncle,” she explains.
“He was so kind. He went above and beyond for everyone. He knew I was in debt and was struggling at the time. So he said, ‘don’t worry about paying me. You just get on your feet.’ And I was really grateful for it.”
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At first Heidi felt completely at ease living with Rob. But then his behaviour changed.
“He would post me on his social media so I could see that he wanted people to know that I lived with him,” she says. “And he would always recommend that we go to local pubs and he would walk in with this energy as though I was his partner.”
It wasn’t just in Heidi’s imagination. One of Rob’s fellow councillors Alex Greenwood had also noticed.
“It became very obvious to me on his social media, both his posts and the pictures he posted, he was presenting a narrative that Heidi was his partner,” she says.
“I said to my husband, ‘do you think Heidi is aware that this is what he is doing and how it comes across to people who don’t know?’”
And other local politicians also had their reservations about the seemingly perfect gent.
Councillor Peter Hunt says: “He was a master at taking all the credit for something whilst not actually doing an awful lot.
“But because he was so good with people, he could manipulate them in a way that they would do the work and he would get the credit, but they would still love him.”
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Rob used to hold hot tub parties at his farmhouse and Peter noticed how many glamorous young women were on the guest list. “He was literally like a wannabe pound shop Hugh Heffner, if you like.”
Possessive behaviour
Heidi had also begun to notice that Rob would get angry if people assumed they were father and daughter rather than a couple, and the incremental red flags were starting to niggle at her.
She says: “At times when I would get myself upset, I’d then pull myself back and tell myself but he does a lot for you.
“He’s so kind, he’s so harmless. But something was really wrong, something was not OK. I sensed that there were eyes watching me.”
But unbeknown to Heidi she wasn’t the first woman who Rob had made feel uncomfortable in his beautiful farmhouse.
He would always recommend that we go to local pubs and he would walk in with this energy as though I was his partner
Heidi Marney
Nearby Hebden Bridge had been devastated by floods on Boxing Day in 2016 and Melanie was left homeless. So who came rushing to her aid to provide her with a place to stay? Rob Holden.
Melanie says: “It was absolutely heartbreaking. I was left with absolutely nothing, nothing at all. So my boss told me about Rob. He had a room available and he wanted to help.
“It seemed a good option because he was a well known person, he wasn’t a complete stranger and he was really, really kind.”
For Heidi more and more alarm bells were starting to ring. He told her stories about previous lodgers walking around naked and one night got drunk and started making suggestive comments to her.
“He started making really inappropriate comments to me. So for example, I would choose a song and he would say ‘Oh my God this is my favourite song, take me to bed right now.’
“And then the next song would come on and he would say: ‘Oh my God, make my babies.’
“And then a song came on that reminded him of his friend and he said we call her ‘Jackie Big Tits’
“And then he said, ‘You’ve got great boobs Heidi.’ I was like what? And it really took me aback.
“And I said ‘What do you mean?’ He said ‘Well you have been living with me for six months Heidi, I’ve seen them.’ That made me feel really, really uncomfortable.”
Heidi tentatively started dating again, using an online app. Again Rob wasn’t happy about it and soon Heidi realised he was tracking her when she went on dates.
She had bought her laptop from Rob and he had set it up with her and synced it with her phone – and she realised when she was out he was using her laptop to track her movements.
Devastated Heidi confided in her aunt, a police officer, who said Rob was acting like a possessive boyfriend and advised her niece to check the house for cameras.
Chilling discovery
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One evening, Rob was in a a two hour zoom council meeting so Heidi took her opportunity.
She searched her bedroom and wardrobe for cameras – and then remembered there was a burglar alarm sensor in the bathroom, which she had always thought was odd.
She took a knife and prised open the device – and inside it said camera and microphone.
“I just absolutely froze. Oh my God – what do I do now? Although I had been building up to believing this could be real, actually being faced with that it was real made me feel physically sick.
“But I didn’t know what to do.
“I barricaded myself in my room for about two hours. Am I going to accuse the town councillor who everyone absolutely adores?
“The nicest man who will ever meet, who spends Christmas Day getting people their Christmas dinners, who mows old people’s lawns. Am I really going to get him arrested?
“I knew the aftermath of this would be horrendous.”
Heidi’s aunt contacted the police who came to arrest Rob – but even then Heidi felt guilty reporting the man who had helped her.
With local community hero Rob’s arrest, the rumour mill went into overdrive.
At first police believed Rob was infatuated with Heidi and she was his only victim. Rob was released, prompting Heidi to do her own detective work.
She had taken photos of the camera she had found and when she googled it she realised it had gone out of production in 2017 – three years before she moved in to Rob’s home.
So the camera hadn’t been put there just for her – convincing her there must be other victims.
“So I started looking for them,” she says. “ I went onto Rob’s Facebook. I typed in his name and hundreds of posts came out from women in particular thanking him for his services with their laptops and phones.”
So Heidi started reaching out to people telling them what had happened to her in a bid to find more evidence against Rob – one of whom was Melanie.
“She described everything that happened and that I was probably one of his victims,” says Melanie.
“But I still generally thought no, Rob’s the nice guy, he won’t have done that to me. He had that infatuation with Heidi, so he won’t have filmed me.”
And within the local community where Rob had been seen as a superhero, people were beginning to think Heidi had made the accusations up and social media was awash with theories.
“People were saying to me ‘Heidi we can’t believe what you have done to Rob.’ I was so stunned about how it was turned around on to me. I couldn’t believe nobody believed me,” she says.
“So when he fled the country I was determined to make his face known, I was going to do a Tindler Swindler on him and make his face known to the world. I believed that this sick individual would do this to other people.
“I was victim-shamed massively. I was taking on this blame and shame for so long, heartbroken that I had ruined Rob ’s life. The pivotal moment for me was when I said to my mum ‘Rob is a good guy’.
“But she said ‘He was a bad man who has just done good things’. That shifted my perspective. A good man would never film me in the bath.”
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Shocking images
While the local councillors and Heidi knew why he had been arrested, they weren’t allowed to say anything for fear of jeopardising the trial.
But Rob Holden could – and he did. He took to social media to say that he had been suffering from mental health difficulties, he had tried to end his own life and was in hospital seeking treatment,
He was inundated with messages of support. Heidi says: “That was really hurtful to me because I wasn’t allowed to say a thing. I wasn’t allowed to defend myself in anyway.
“When he was arrested everybody was talking about it and he kept lying about me saying I was a liar, a narcissist, I was trying to ruin his life, I was on drugs and a prostitute.
“The police told me I wasn’t allowed to say anything as it could prejudice the case. Rob was loved by everyone in all these community groups. I loved him. If I had heard this I would have believed Rob, I would have thought your poor thing.
“So the community was hating on me. It really stressed me out. I got really unwell, I had people attacking me from all angles.”
He even called Heidi’s mum claiming she had used his farmhouse to solicit as a webcam girl.
Voyeurism in the UK
SPYING on someone for kicks in the UK isn’t just sleazy – it’s illegal.
Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, voyeurism is a criminal offence that covers secretly watching or recording someone doing a private act without their consent, all for sexual thrills.
And it’s not just about old-school peeping through keyholes – the law was beefed up in 2019 with the Voyeurism (Offences) Act, after a wave of “upskirting” cases.
To land a conviction, prosecutors must prove the creep acted for sexual gratification or to humiliate the victim.
Offenders often end up on the Sex Offenders Register too.
There’s growing pressure for even tougher laws.
In January 2025, Labour vowed to make the act of taking any intimate image without consent a specific criminal offence, plugging loopholes in existing rules.
But behind the scenes police were still scrutinising Rob’s computers and had found files of images of women – one of whom was Melanie.
“Two lady officers came to the house and explain everything that had happened like Heidi had told me and could I confirm these pictures were me,” says Melanie.
“But you couldn’t deny they were me. And yeah, so I did become a victim of Rob because he had done it to me. There were pictures of me getting dressed, walking round in a towel, getting changed in the bathroom and then in the bath.
“You feel a bit sick. I only came to you because you offered help and now you’ve made me a victim when I’d already lost everything I owned.”
Holden was eventually charged but went on the run to Cape Verde for 17 months before he was made to face court back in the UK after a lengthy extradition process.
The court heard he had filmed 27 women, a man and a child over a period of 14 years, from 2006 until 2020.
He eventually pleaded guilty to 31 charges of voyeurism and seven of computer misuse and was jailed for six years and two months.
Melanie says: “I genuinely thank God for Heidi, because how long would that have carried on for?
“It goes back 20-odd years so it would’ve carried on for another 20 years. Who actually is Rob? Everything was fake. The friendship was fake. I wish I’d never met him.”
Heidi adds: “I want to raise so much awareness about adult grooming. The common denominator between us all was how vulnerable we all were and he had a protocol of what he did.
“I did not think I was capable of being groomed. I know something was wrong but I didn’t know what.
“My version of grooming is of an under-aged girl who maybe comes from a disadvantaged background.
“I didn’t think that I could be groomed and nor did any of the other women. Adult grooming is a thing and it isn’t what you expect.”
Peeping Tom: The Landlord and His Secret Cameras airs on Channel 5 on Thursday April 10 at 10pm
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