Mohamed Al Fayed accused of raping five women who worked at Harrods
Five women have claimed they were raped by former Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed while working at the luxury department store.
More than 20 ex-employees have said the billionaire, who died last year aged 94, sexually assaulted them.
The incidents allegedly took place in London, Paris, St Tropez and Abu Dhabi.
One woman, who said Al Fayed raped her at his Park Lane home, said: ‘I made it obvious that I didn’t want that to happen. I did not give consent. I just wanted it to be over.’
Another says she was a teenager when she was raped at the Mayfair address.
She said he treated all the staff at Harrods like his ‘playthings’, adding: ‘Mohamed Al Fayed was a monster, a sexual predator with no moral compass whatsoever.
‘We were all so scared. He actively cultivated fear. If he said ‘jump’ employees would ask “how high”.’
Barrister Bruce Drummon, who is representing a number of the women, said: ‘The spider’s web of corruption and abuse in this company was unbelievable and very dark.’
They told the BBC Harrods had failed to intervene and accused the store of covering up the allegations.
The current owners have said they are ‘utterly appalled’ and apologised for failing the women who came forward.
Gemma, who worked as one of Al Fayed’s personal assistants between 2007-2009 said he raped her at Villa Windsor in Paris.
She said she woke up in her bedroom with Al Fayed stood next to her in just a silk dressing gown before he tried to get into bed with her.
She said: ‘I told him, “no, I don’t want you to”. And he proceeded to just keep trying to get in the bed, at which point he was kind of on top of me and [I] really couldn’t move anywhere.
‘I was kind of face down on the bed and he just pressed himself on me.’
After she was raped she cried, while he got up and told her to wash herself with Dettol.
‘Obviously he wanted me to erase any trace of him being anywhere near me,’ she explained.
Gemma told of having to destroy recordings she had made of Mr Al Fayed sexually harassing her.
‘The HR department during my leaving process had said that in order to leave quietly and quickly, they needed me to destroy all of my evidence,’ she told the Today programme.
‘They gave me a settlement, they made me shred my evidence and I had to sign an NDA to say I would never speak about it.’
‘Pattern of behaviour’
One woman, named Sophia, worked as his personal assistant from 1988 to 1991 and says he tried to rape her more than once.
The number of allegations have revealed a pattern of predatory behaviour by Al Fayed as the Harrods owner would tour the department store.
He would identify young female assistants he found attractive and promote them to work in his offices upstairs, former staff have said.
Many of the women underwent extensive medical tests before they started work, including invasive sexual health tests – but many did not see their own results.
Katherine, who was an executive assistant in 2005, said: ‘There is no benefit to anybody knowing what my sexual health is, unless you’re planning to sleep with somebody, which I find quite chilling now.’
The alleged assaults would then be carried out there, or in his London apartment and on foreign trips.
One former staff member said: ‘We all watched each other walk through that door thinking, “you poor girl, it’s you today” and feeling utterly powerless to stop it.’
One victim said she was called to his apartment and was asked to sit on his bed before Al Fayed put his hand on her leg.
She said: ‘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.
‘He raped me.’
Another victim said she felt she couldn’t say no as she had to pay rent and didn’t have a family home to go back to.
‘I knew I had to go through this and I didn’t want to. It was horrible and my head was scrambled.’
Al Fayed was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and came to London in the 1960s and set about building a business empire.
He took control of Harrods in 1985 and later expanded his business interests to include the Paris Ritz and Fulham Football Club.
The tycoon was rarely out of the newspapers, with his most public attack on the House of Windsor and the Establishment over the death of his son and heir Dodi – alongside Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.
He spent a decade after their deaths repeatedly claiming that they were murdered in a plot by the security services and the Duke of Edinburgh.
But he was forced to reluctantly concede defeat after a high-profile six-month inquest in 2007 and 2008.
The billionaire’s relationship with the Royal Family was depicted in season five of The Crown, where Mr Al Fayed, played by Salim Daw, was seen getting to know Diana.
Al Fayed had previously been accused of sexually assaulting and groping multiple women, but a 2015 police investigation did not lead to any charges.
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