A man convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl has been jailed for seven years, in a case in which the retired high court judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss told the jury she was astonished at the allegations against the man.

Lady Butler-Sloss, a former president of the high court’s family division and now a working peer, was called to give evidence by Philip Chard’s defence team.

She knew Chard because his mother cleaned at her country house in Devon.

She told the court that she had tried “numerous cases over 34 years, mostly dealing with sexual or physical abuse” and thought Chard “a much less probable offender than many I have come across”.

The peer came in for criticism after Butler-Sloss gave character evidence supportive of Chard at another trial eight years ago when he was accused of assaulting a man while working as a nightclub bouncer. Chard was also convicted for that offence, but on that occasion avoided being sent to prison.

Last month a jury at Exeter crown court was told that Chard, 44, crept into a bedroom where his 13-year-old victim was sleeping and put his hand inside her pyjamas, and later returned and forced her to have sex. The victim said her mind went blank and she remembered feeling angry, shocked, frightened and confused.

Chard, of Lympstone, Devon, was found guilty of rape and one count of sexual activity with a child. He was cleared of four other counts of sexual activity with a child.

On Monday the judge Erik Salomonsen jailed Chard for seven years for the rape and one year concurrently for the sexual activity charge.
He told Chard that “he could not resist a very attractive 13-year-old girl” and “became increasingly attracted to her”. The judge did not refer to Butler-Sloss during the sentencing but said Chard was a man “who has merits”.

At his 2007 trial, Chard was accused of causing grievous bodily harm to a man called Daniel Potter while working as a doorman at a club in Exmouth. Potter suffered a fractured jaw, sustained cuts to his chin, lip and tongue and had to have two teeth surgically removed after Chard threw him out of the club for falling asleep on a sofa.

In court then, Butler-Sloss described Chard in warm terms. “He is a sensible, calm and very pleasant young man. He is quiet and extraordinarily helpful to me,” she told the court. “I have considerable respect for his common sense. I admire the way he looks after his mother.”

The jury found Chard guilty and he was ordered to pay his victim compensation and do 200 hours of unpaid community work.
Potter and his family have expressed anger that Butler-Sloss had again backed him in court. Potter said: “She is someone who is very high up. It seems like she has tried to help him twice.”

Asked after Chard was found guilty of rape why she had testified in the recent case when she must have known that he had a conviction for violence, Butler-Sloss said: “On the first occasion I gave evidence of character. I did not give evidence of character in the latest trial.”
Rather, she said, she had given evidence of a factual nature, and she insisted she did not give testimony about his “general character”.

On Monday she said: “At the moment I gave evidence in support of Philip Chard he was accused and not convicted and I had not heard the evidence and spoke from my knowledge of him at an earlier time. I mainly gave factual evidence about the days on which his mother worked for me.”

There is no suggestion that Butler-Sloss has broken any rules.
Butler-Sloss was appointed by the government to chair the child sex abuse inquiry but she stood down after it was claimed that there was a conflict of interest because her brother, the late Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general during the 1980s – one of the periods that is to be examined by the panel.