Mohamed al Fayed. Photo / Getty Images
Mohamed Fayed, the former owner of Harrods, is said to have raped and sexually assaulted a string of women who worked at the department store.
More than 20 women claimed they were sexually assaulted by the billionaire, who died last year at the age of 94, and five of those said they were raped.
The women, who worked at Harrods from the late 1980s to the 2000s, said assaults were carried out at the company’s offices, in Fayed’s London apartment or on foreign trips, often at the Ritz hotel in Paris.
It is claimed he would regularly tour the department store’s sales floors to identify young female assistants he found attractive before isolating and attacking them.
The BBC revealed the allegations in a documentary and podcast called Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods. In the expose, the broadcaster claims Harrods not only failed to intervene but also helped cover up allegations against Fayed.
The current owners of Harrods said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations, stressing that the company today was “very different”.
Bruce Drummond, a barrister from a legal team representing several of the women, said: “The spider’s web of corruption and abuse in this company was unbelievable and very dark.”
Speaking to the BBC, one of his alleged victims, Sophia, who worked as Fayed’s personal assistant from 1988 to 1991, said he tried to rape her more than once. She said: “He was vile.”
After Fayed was featured in two series of Netflix’s The Crown, she spoke of her anger at his portrayal as a pleasant and gregarious character.
Sophie, who didn’t give her second name, said: “That makes me angry – people shouldn’t remember him like that. It’s not how he was.”
Another alleged victim, Rachel – not her real name – who was 19 at the time, stayed in one of Fayed’s apartments on his insistence instead of taking a taxi home after working late on Harrods business.
He then invited her to his personal apartment, where he asked her to sit on the bed, with his hand on her leg and a firm grip, she said.
She added: “I made it obvious that I didn’t want that to happen. I did not give consent. I just wanted it to be over. I remember feeling his body on me, the weight of him. Just hearing him make these noises. And just going somewhere else in my head.”
Rachel told the BBC: “He raped me. Afterwards, you blame yourself. You’re there to do a job, and this is your boss standing there in front of you in a dressing gown. And so even when you’re trying to get out of the situation, I’m trying not to offend him.”
Gemma is another alleged victim who claims she was raped by Fayed.
Gemma was personal assistant to Fayed from 2007 to 2009. She told how she was subjected to an intimate medical check shortly after starting the job, which she now believes was to test for sexually transmitted diseases.
Asked whether she had to have an “invasive gynaecological examination” after starting the role, she told the BBC’s Today Programme: “Yes. So that was one of the selling points, was that, oh, you get these medical checks, and it’s really good.
“You know, they sold it to me that they do mole-mapping, and they’ll check you, screen you for breast cancer and all of that kind of thing.
“So I just went along with the flow. It was all part of joining. They said you need to have it to be able to work in the chairman’s office.”
She added: “The gynaecological tests kind of sold to me that it was like a smear test. And I’d never had a smear test at that point, being 24. It wasn’t on my radar, and I didn’t really know what one involved.
“So when I got there they did the smear test and went on to do other tests, one of which was checking my ovaries, which I’d never heard of before.
“And to this day, I’ve never had one, never been asked to have one, and that was hugely invasive. That involved her inserting her hand and checking. To this day, I don’t know why.
“It was definitely looking for [STIs], because I’ve still got the doctor’s reports, and they did list like, you know, clear for chlamydia or all of those kinds of things.
“The relevance to doing an admin job versus having your ovaries checked doesn’t make sense. But at the time, I was told that was what was required and if I wanted the job I had to do it.”
In 2009, Gemma contacted a lawyer and provided him with transcripts of a tape she had recorded of Fayed allegedly making unwanted sexual advances towards her.
She received a payout from Harrods, but under the condition that she shredded all the evidence that she had gathered, she claimed in the documentary.
Harrods’ lawyers organised for a shredding truck to destroy the material, which also included transcripts of messages and voicemails from Fayed that were “really quite nasty”, she said.
Gemma said: “I think they just wanted to get rid of it as quick as possible, and get rid of me as quick as possible.”
She added: “I was advised it would be in my best interest not to talk. That I was to keep it quiet.
“All these years not being able to talk about something that’s so unfair. It’s so unfair to make somebody go through something like that and then expect them not to talk about it. It’s cruel.”
One alleged victim, who started working at Harrods in 2007 as a shop assistant when she was 15, told the BBC she went to the police accusing Fayed of sexual assault.
She said: “I was a child when this happened. He was nearly 80 and I was 15. I spoke to my parents and we thought the best people to talk to were the police.”
However, the case was dropped because of a lack of evidence, she said.
In the documentary, Fayed’s security team is alleged to have known about his behaviour.
Tony Leeming, a manager at Harrods from 1994 to 2004, said security guards would gossip about Fayed groping people.
Steve, who was part of Fayed’s personal security team from 1994 to 1995, said: “We did know that certain things were happening to certain female employees at Harrods and Park Lane.”
Another man, who was also part of his personal security team in the 90s, and is not identified in the documentary, said a woman leaving 60 Park Lane had told him that Fayed had asked her to sit on his lap.
John Macnamara, head of security and a former Met Police officer, allegedly threatened a victim who was going to speak to a Vanity Fair journalist, saying he knew where her parents lived.
Fayed had been accused of groping and sexually assaulting female employees across his lifetime, including a rape allegation that was investigated by police in 2015 but did not lead to any charges.
Fayed was an Egyptian-born businessman who became a controversial figure in British public life – both for his dealings with MPs in the “cash for questions” scandal and as the father of Dodi Fayed, who died in the Paris car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales.
Fayed was a businessman in the Middle East before moving to the UK in the 1970s. He took control of Harrods in 1985 and purchased the Ritz hotel in Paris in 1979. He was also the owner of Fulham FC between 1997 and 2013.
In the decade after the deaths of his son and the Princess, he repeatedly claimed that Dodi had been murdered in a plot by the British establishment. But he was forced to reluctantly concede defeat after a six-month inquest in 2007 and 2008. The jury returned unlawful killing verdicts on both the Princess and Dodi, but pinned the blame on the drink-driving of chauffeur Henri Paul, who also died in the crash.
After 26 years in charge of Harrods, Fayed sold it to the Qatari royal family for a reported £1.5 billion in 2010. At the time, he said problems with pension fund trustees were behind his decision to sell.
Fayed died in September last year aged 94.
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