[imagesource:wikimediacommons]

It has been revealed that somewhere around 100 women are feared to have been sexually abused by Mohamed Al Fayed, the late billionaire and former owner of Harrods.

As it stands, over 20 female ex-Harrods employees have accused Al Fayed, who died last year at age 94, of sexually assaulting them, according to an in-depth BBC investigation. One victim claims she was assaulted when she was 15 and Al Fayed was 79.

The high-end London department store said that it is “utterly appalled” by allegations of abuse – including rape – perpetrated by its former owner, who they said was “intent on abusing his power wherever he operated”, CNN notes.

The BBC documentary claims Al Fayed deployed an army of aides to silence his alleged victims and used his power and wealth to evade justice. He allegedly deployed Harrods staff, a former senior Met Police officer, lawyers and PR agents to threaten his victims who he spied on using hidden cameras and bugging equipment, per the Mirror.

The ex-staff members allege they were attacked over 24 years, at a wide range of locations, including Al Fayed’s luxury apartment building in London, the Ritz hotel in Paris, which Al Fayed owned, and a Parisian villa that Al Fayed rented called Villa Windsor, known for being the main residence of the Duke of Windsor, a former British king, and his wife, for decades.

Thirteen women said they were sexually assaulted at Al Fayed’s apartment block, including four who said they were raped there.

Numerous women interviewed in the BBC investigation described instances of being invited to an apartment block owned by Al Fayed after finishing late shifts at Harrods. They said they would be invited there under the pretense of safety, being allocated their own apartment to stay in to avoid traveling home late at night. Once there, the women said they would be called up to Al Fayed’s own apartment, where he would greet them in a silk robe and force himself onto them.

One woman claims Al Fayed’s sexual abuse was well known during his time in charge of Harrods from 1986 up to 2010 when he sold it.

She said: “We all watched each other walk through that door thinking, ‘You poor girl, it’s you today’ and feeling powerless to stop it.”

A number of the women, who all go by pseudonyms in the documentary, said they were “required” to have ­invasive examinations for sexually transmitted diseases.

Katherine, an executive assistant in 2005, said: “There is no benefit in anybody knowing what my sexual health is unless you’re planning to sleep with somebody, which I find quite chilling now.”

Rachel recalls how she was raped at one of Al Fayed’s ­apartments.

She said: “I made it obvious I didn’t want that to happen. I remember feeling his body on me. Just hearing him make these noises.”

Ellie was 15 when she told police in 2008 that Al Fayed groped and tried to kiss her in Harrods, which turned into nothing as the police worked with him to cover it up.

She claims the case was dropped after details were leaked by the Met Police who allegedly wiped evidence from her phone. Ellie said of Al Fayed’s reaction when she resisted him: “He went into a rage and started screaming at me. I was a child when this happened. I was 15 and he was nearly 80.”

Gemma, a former personal ­assistant to Al Fayed, also accused him of rape.

She said going to the police “was not an option” and added: “He felt like such a powerful man with so much money and so many professional people around him who were ­facilitating everything he did.”

Another of Al Fayed’s assistants, Sophia, claimed he tried to rape her more than once.

She said his jolly appearance was a carefully cultivated act and added: “That makes me angry, people shouldn’t remember him like that. It’s not how he was. He was vile.”

Sophie’s husband, Keaton, a relentless TV producer, has spent the last six years digging deep into Al Fayed’s dark web of secrets. His investigation has uncovered chilling evidence, leading him to believe that over 100 victims may have been caught in Al Fayed’s sinister crosshairs.

He said: “I’ve spoken to dozens I know to be affected, and I want to speak to, women in triple figures.” Another woman claimed she was raped as a teenager by Al Fayed and said staff at Harrods were his ­“playthings”.

There are claims that Harrods’ head of security John Macnamara was used by Al Fayed to threaten women who made any abuse claims, with one victim who had spoken to Vanity Fair in 1995 about Al Fayed noting how ­Macnamara visited her, after which she never again spoke of the claims.

She added: “He said I wasn’t to be involved in that article and if I went against his advice to be aware he knew where my parents lived. It turned me cold.”

Macnamara died in 2019. Former Harrods employees told the BBC that Al Fayed’s treatment of women was known throughout the department store, with one former department manager saying that it “wasn’t even a secret.”

“I knew and I think, if I knew, everybody knew. Anyone who says they didn’t they’re lying,” the former department manager Tony Leeming said.

“Looking back on it now it’s pretty repellent, he continued.

Al Fayed’s son, Dodi Fayed, died in 1997 along with Princess Diana in a high-speed car crash in Paris. Al Fayed died aged 94 in August last year.

Harrods apologised to victims in a statement, adding that “the Harrods of today is a very different organization to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed.” They said that since “new information came to light” about historic allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by Al Fayed, “it has been our priority to settle claims in the quickest way possible, avoiding lengthy legal proceedings for the women involved. This process is still available for any current or former Harrods employees.”

It is a great pity that Al Fayed managed to evade punishment and consequence right up until death.

[source:cnn]