Three survivors of Mohamed al-Fayed’s alleged sexual assault and rape have opened up on a culture of abuse, humiliation, and manipulation under the former Harrods owner.
Lindsay Mason, 55, Gemma, 42, and Katherine, 51, were all victims of sexual assault or attempted rape while they worked under Fayed as young women.
Meeting today for the first time since coming forward with their experiences, the survivors swapped numbers and shared stories.
“Our healing will be done now together, everyone’s connected,” Lindsay told a pool of reporters after Friday’s press conference.
The legal team representing the women said 37 people have now come forward relating to the case. 5 women have said they were raped by Fayed.
After meeting their fellow survivors today, Katherine said it was “really validating” to hear the experiences of other women who had gone through similar things.
“We’re all from the 80s to the mid-2000s, we never knew each other. But talking this morning, I mean, we were all shouting at the TV last night, ‘yes, that happened to me’,” she said.
The women revealed times they were made to “perform” for celebrities, were tormented emotionally by Fayed, and were forced to fight off his physical advances.
Often the abuse took place on Fayed’s yacht moored near Monaco, where he would bring celebrities and expect the women to “entertain” his guests.
Gemma recalled Fayed throwing a lobster at her because she wasn’t talking during a dinner on the yacht with Piers Morgan, Ashley Cole and Cheryl Tweedy – then Cheryl Cole.
No one said anything, Gemma said, something which she viewed as a theme: “People just carried on like nothing happened. That was a very common thing that I’d seen.
“I remember walking off the yacht in St Tropez, and he went, ‘carry my bag you f****** donkey’ in front of a full hoard of paparazzi… but then everyone carried on like nothing had happened.”
Humiliation was part of Fayed’s game, Gemma said. If she had not accepted his sexual advances, she would know that a rough afternoon of humiliation and anger lay ahead – an experience which both Lindsay and Katherine agreed with.
“He would threaten you all the time. He would say, if you’re not good with me, then you’re in trouble. You’d never tell exactly what trouble you would be, but you’d be in trouble,” Gemma added.
Gemma said the security “absolutely, 100 percent” knew what was going on behind closed doors, when Fayed was committing his alleged crimes.
“On one occasion, I went crying to them and said, ‘help, he’s been trying to get my room’.
“They passed me a cloth and some chopsticks, and said, if you roll the cloth and put the chopsticks under the door, that will jam the door enough that he can’t get in.”
Lindsay was 20 at the time she alleges Fayed began “grooming” her in 1989.
Within months she was taken to Paris, flying on a private jet with Fayed and celebrities Barry Humphreys, Sandra Scott and Jeff Banks.
At one point, Lindsay and another young woman were sent out to do some shopping – before being made to put on a “fashion show” and parade what they had bought to Fayed and his guests.
It was on that trip that Fayed allegedly attempted to rape Lindsay, after they had been out for dinner with the three celebrities.
Lindsay was summoned to the lounge by Fayed’s security.
“I sat on the furthest point I could from him – we all tried to do that – and he got up to get a drink. But then he came and sat right down next to me, and within seconds, he just flipped.”
“It was a very sustained sexual assault, an attempted rape, and I managed to kick him off. Then I ran down the hallway, I barricaded myself in my bedroom with an armoire, and I slept on the floor with my back to that so that I would be able to feel if he tried to come in and finish the job.”
Lindsay does not remember being brought out of the room and believes she was drugged, before being falsely imprisoned in the management offices.
Security flanked her while she went to the toilet with a colleague, who told her to be quiet so she wasn’t heard by nearby cameras when Lindsay wanted to tell her about the attempted rape.
After being relocked in the room, Lindsay says she was “scared for her life”.
“I pretended that I had an upset stomach, banging on the door, and they let me out. And luckily, he had a very high profile person turning up and all the security was on that.
“So I just ran for my life.”
Katherine worked for Fayed in 2005 for just three months, before being fired the day her probation ended after she rejected his advances.
She was made to buy a new suit every day for a week after Fayed told her that her chest was “distracting”, and was told to blow dry her hair because he “didn’t like the fact she had curly hair”.
When Katherine slept overnight in the House of Windsor with Fayed, she blocked her door with a chair. The next day, he called her into the office, and said “you don’t f******* block a door in my house”.
The only way Fayed could have known she blocked the door is if he tried to get in, she said.
Back in London, Fayed tried to force himself onto Katherine, but she fought him off. Soon afterwards, she was fired.
The women expressed the impact meeting all the other women had on them.
“It’s you feel like, wow, you know, this is what happened to other people. People will now believe me”, Gemma said
“For so many years, we’ve kept it secret for fear of people not believing us, not taking us seriously. And now all of a sudden, all these amazing women are coming forward, and they’ve got the same story.”