A WORCESTER nightclub boss who was compared to terrifying movie serial killer Hannibal Lecter by the woman who feared he would rape her has been jailed for 21 months.

Bushwackers and Browns owner Darren Pinches showed no emotion as he was led down red-faced into the cells from the dock of court four at Warwick Crown Court to begin his sentence this afternoon.

The court heard he swore at the woman, called her a "bitch" and offered her cocaine in an attempt to have sex with her.

A jury found him guilty of offering to supply cocaine to the then 40-year-old woman before demanding they have sex on a desk in a private ‘office’ at Browns between September 10 and 13, 2015.

He was also convicted of possession of the class A drug at his home after police arrived to arrest him on January 13 last year. 

His barrister, Michael Burrows QC, had earlier asked the judge to impose a community order, informing him his client was willing to perform unpaid work.

Instead judge Anthony Potter jailed Pinches, sentencing him to 21 months for the offer to supply and four months concurrent for possession.

Pinches was caught trying to wash cocaine down the sink of his then home in Berkley Gardens, Fernhill Heath, Worcester, on January 13 last year after police arrived to arrest him on suspicion of attempted rape at about 7.40am.

He was taken to the floor by several officers and handcuffed as police recovered the cocaine from a ripped grip-seal bag.

The judge told Pinches: “This is not a case, I remind myself, where you have expressed any remorse for your offending. You have continued to deny this offence as is your right.”

Pinches was acquitted of a sexual assault and administering cocaine with intent to stupefy or overpower a 20-year-old woman in a Bushwackers storeroom on New Year’s Day last year.

He was also cleared of supplying cocaine to a third woman, then 19, at the Crypt in Bushwackers and later at an apartment at the Quay overlooking the flooded river Severn in Worcester between February 9 and 15, 2016. 

Judge Anthony Potter said of the offer to supply cocaine to the woman at Browns: “You became aggressive, so aggressive in fact that she compared the transformation to turning into a Hannibal Lecter figure.

“You made a series of expletive-laden demands and announced the plan to have sexual intercourse with her. You referred to her as a bitch and cleared in a violent manner the desk in front of you of any items and demanded she get undressed and get onto the desk.

“It’s clear that your main intention in offering her cocaine was with a view to lowering her resistance to your approaches and seeking to make her more vulnerable to your sexual advances.

"She described how she had never been so scared in her life. She plainly thought she was about to be the victim of forced sexual intercourse.”

The judge acknowledged that Pinches had not manhandled the woman but had followed her.

She locked herself in her car for ‘sanctuary’, believing her drink had been spiked after being ushered out of Browns by a manager who had already tried to get her to leave the room where she was with Pinches by telling her her taxi was ready despite her not having ordered one. 

The judge took the view that Pinches had earlier sent someone in person with a message at Bottles bar in the city with a view to isolating her from the friends with whom she had been socialising and said it was clear from her evidence she had been disoriented when she returned to Browns from Bottles at Pinches’s request.

Judge Potter said the woman had made it clear she did not want any of the five lines of cocaine Pinches had put out but that he had put pressure on her, telling her it would be ‘our secret’. 

The judge accepted there was no scientific evidence her drink had been spiked and no such charge had been brought against Pinches by the Crown, telling the defendant he could not be sure on the evidence her drink had been interfered with.

He also made clear he would sentence on the basis that the offer of cocaine was ‘an isolated occasion’.

Mr Burrows had handed up two references on Pinches behalf and stressed that the offer to supply cocaine had been at the lowest level on a social, non-commercial basis and said the counts of which his client had been convicted would not have been pursued by the prosecution but for the other more serious allegations of which he had now been acquitted.

He said: “The allegation put great strain on his marriage and, because of his position in Worcester, this case has attracted considerable publicity.

"It’s one thing for him to have to bear that publicly but another for members of his family to cope with it and his children to have to cope with it and the comments they have had at school about his conduct.”

Mr Burrows also said the case had had an impact on his client’s business and that this represented not just his livelihood but that of others too.

He spoke of Pinches often being ‘choked with emotion’ which he called ‘a measure of the strain he has been under’, a strain made greater by the allegations of which his client had been acquitted.

The trial lasted nearly a month at the Warwickshire Justice Centre in Leamington Spa.

No order was made for costs because of the nature of the sentence imposed..