Mohammed Al-Fayed, the wealthy owner of London’s Ritz and Harrods stores, was a sexual predator, according to the explosive accusations made by five women to the BBC in a series of documentaries that aired on Thursday, September 19. The women allege that they were repeatedly assaulted and also raped, with some of the incidents occurring when they were minors. Al-Fayed, who had friends in high places and mingled with celebrities, was the father of Dodi Al-Fayed, Diana’s last lover, who died with her in a car accident under the Pont de l’Alma in Paris, in 1997.
Since then, wave after wave of revelations have been made about the conduct of this Egyptian businessman, who died in 2023 at the age of 94. A growing number of women, who all worked for Harrods between the 1980s and early 2000s, have been contacting the BBC to testify about having been sexually assaulted.
On Saturday, September 21, Bruce Drummond, a lawyer with New Bailey Chambers and a member of the team representing 37 of Al-Fayed’s alleged victims, told BBC Radio 4 that 150 new individual investigations had been opened since the British public broadcaster’s scoop. “This is the worst case of corporate sexual exploitation of young women that (…) probably the world has ever seen,” said the lawyer, who, at a press conference the day before in the presence of victims, compared the businessman to American producer Harvey Weinstein.
According to witnesses, these events took place in various locations, including the billionaire’s London apartment, during his trips to Dubai, at Paris’ Ritz or the Windsor villa on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. This former residence of the short-lived King Edward VIII (who abdicated after an 11-month reign) had been bought by Al-Fayed in the mid-1980s.
The ‘most vulnerable’ prey
“I did not give consent. I just wanted it to be over,” explained one of the five women in the BBC documentary, who accused Al-Fayed of having raped her in his Park Lane apartment. Most of the alleged victims testified under aliases or preferred to remain anonymous. Another, Gemma, also worked as the businessman’s personal assistant between 2007 and 2009. She claimed to have been raped at the Windsor villa. Natacha, who testified at a press conference with her lawyers on Friday, said she was tested by Harrods management for HIV and sexually transmitted infections but never received the results.
These women talked about how vulnerable they felt against the threats from their billionaire boss, who ordered them not to speak out after his assaults. One of them, Sophia, told the BBC that she had lived through a “nightmare”: “I couldn’t leave [Harrods]. I didn’t have a [family] home to go back to, I had to pay rent.” Natacha, who was 19 when she worked for Al-Fayed, recounted how he chose the “most vulnerable.” After raping her, he allegedly threatened her, telling her that he knew where she and her family lived and that if she spoke out, she would “never work in London again.”
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