Mohammed Al-Fayed, the wealthy owner of London’s Ritz and Harrods department stores, was a sexual predator, according to explosive allegations made by five women who spoke to the BBC in a series of documentaries broadcast on September 19. They claim to have been assaulted on multiple occasions, but also raped (some as minors at the time of the incident), by this friend of the powerful and the stars, father of Dodi Al-Fayed, Diana’s last lover, who died with her in a car crash under the Pont de l’Alma in Paris in 1997.
Since then, revelations have continued to emerge about the conduct of the Egyptian businessman, who died in 2023 at the age of 94. More and more women, all of whom worked at Harrods between the 1980s and early 2000s, have contacted the BBC to testify about sexual assaults.
On Saturday 21 September, Bruce Drummond, a barrister at New Bailey Chambers and a member of the team defending 37 alleged victims of Mohammed Al-Fayed, told BBC Radio 4 that 150 new individual investigations have been opened since the British public broadcaster’s scoop. “probably the worst case of sexual exploitation of young women in the world” The lawyer said that during a press conference the day before, in the presence of the victims, he compared the businessman to the American producer Harvey Weinstein.
The events are said to have taken place in the billionaire’s London apartment, during his trips to Dubai, at the Ritz in Paris or even at the Villa Windsor, on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne. This former residence of the ephemeral King Edward VIII (who abdicated after eleven months of reign) had been purchased by Mohammed Al-Fayed in the mid-1980s.
The “most fragile prey”
“I made it very clear that I didn’t want to. I didn’t give my consent, I just wanted to get this over with.” “This is the case,” explains one of the five women in the BBC documentary, who accuses Al-Fayed of rape at his Park Lane flat. Most of the alleged victims testify under assumed names or prefer to remain anonymous. Another, Gemma, also worked as the businessman’s personal assistant between 2007 and 2009. She says she was raped at Windsor Villa. Natacha, who testified at a press conference with her lawyers on Friday, claims that Harrods management subjected her to tests for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, the results of which she never received.
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