Ex-Harrods staff describe decades of abuse

Women working at Harrods were treated like “lambs to the slaughter” during the years when Mohamed Al Fayed was able to use his London department store to commit abuse at will, one of the accusers said.

Lindsay was one of five women who shared their stories with BBC Breakfast, telling of the night she says she was drugged and attempted to rape during a business trip to Paris.

Jen also spoke on the program, opening up publicly for the first time about the trials and tribulations she has endured 35 years later.

Their stories paint a broad picture of how Fayed’s behaviour at Harrods was made possible. A growing number of stories have emerged as part of a major BBC documentary investigation, Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods.

The five prosecutors urged other women with similar stories to come forward.

Sexual abuse, intimidation, daily groping, human trafficking, attempted rape, wrongful imprisonment: that’s what Lindsay says was her reality when she worked as Fayed’s personal assistant for five months in 1989-90.

She has told her story before, but this morning she shared shocking new details about the night she says she was drugged and attacked in Paris.

Lindsay said she was dining with Fayed, another colleague and three celebrities when she was “tapped on the shoulder by security” and taken away.

Lindsay assumed that she and her colleague would go to the Ritz, the exclusive Paris hotel that Fayed also owned.

Instead, she was taken to an apartment owned by his son, Dodi.

“When you came in, all the doors were locked behind you. I said to the security guard ‘what is all this’.

“He said, ‘It’s just to protect you,’ but it was also to make sure you couldn’t escape.

“It was the most terrifying night of my life.”

Lindsay says she has no recollection of returning from Paris and of sustaining serious injuries. She says she was later held down in a Harrods office by a colleague on Fayed’s orders.

She managed to escape.

“Harrods will never leave me,” she added.

“The thoughts, the memories of those tragic events are inside me.”

Fayed bought Harrods in 1985 and sold it in 2010.

The BBC has found evidence that shows there was a culture of fear in the store during his tenurea period in which he could act with apparent impunity, without his predatory behavior being criticized.

The current owners have apologized, saying his actions were those of “someone who wanted to abuse his power.”

Harrods has also confirmed it is investigating whether any other members of staff at the store were involved in the allegations against Fayed. The BBC revealed that a woman claimed a manager who still worked there failed to investigate when she said she had been sexually assaulted.

Lindsay told the BBC that Harrods as an organisation must be held accountable for a system that allowed Fayed to target women.

She added: “Who needs 25 PAs? They made this situation possible and sent us like lambs to the slaughter.”

Jen, who first spoke publicly about her story after relinquishing her anonymity, says she was the victim of a number of sexual assaults and attempted rapes in the five years she worked for Fayed.

“I have been living with this secret for 35 years that I am deeply ashamed of,” she said.

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

She said Fayed “still felt like a threat up until the moment he died” and that his death in August 2023 “helped me come forward without fear of the consequences”.

Jen recently told her family about her experience, describing the conversation as “something I hoped I would never have to do.”

Prosecutors who spoke today agreed that Fayed’s modus operandi was designed to make his victims feel isolated.

“He made you feel like you were the only one this was happening to,” Jen said.

She told how he secretly asked to be called ‘daddy’.

Fayed would tell her to see him as a father figure, that he would protect me and take care of me.

He offered her a flat in Park Lane, in central London, where she could stay, on the pretext that she would not have to travel home alone late at night.

Jen later discovered that there were secret cameras inside.

Katherine’s story was first told publicly on BBC Breakfast.

In 2005, she was hired through an outside agency and was initially only told that she would be working for a “wealthy” person.

Shortly after meeting Fayed, her new job became hell.

“The first week or so was really humiliating. I had the Harrods outfit of a black suit and he called me into his office and said ‘this isn’t working’.

“He ripped the buttons off the front of my shirt, stuffed money in my shirt pocket and told me to buy more suits. I came back the next day and he repeated it over and over again.”

That first week, Katherine was “devastated” and she realized she was in even greater danger during a business trip to Paris.

“I realized I was in danger there because my door wasn’t locked. I had to barricade the door with a suitcase and a chair.

“He eventually forced himself on me in his office. I chased him away and told him ‘I’m a PA and only a PA, and that’s what I do.’

“He said ‘you should have worked at the post office’. The next day my desk was gone and I lost my job.”

Gemma worked as a personal assistant to Fayed between 2007 and 2009.

She described how he became “scarier” during trips abroad, a pattern that several of his accusers have confirmed.

Gemma says she was raped in Paris during one of those trips.

She said: “It’s something that will probably never go away… ultimately it feels like Harrods will never go away.”

Like the other women the BBC spoke to, Gemma fears there are many more of Fayed’s victims out there.

She said: “It’s shocking how many women have been involved over the years.

“It could be thousands, you just don’t know.

“In my day there must have been hundreds of women who were brought into the office, disappeared into meeting rooms and left in tears.”

Gemma also told how telling her story had helped her cope with the trauma and praised the “amazing support” she had received from her co-accusers.

“Together we grow stronger, day after day.”

A recurring theme in the stories of women who worked at Harrods is that they did not realise the danger they were exposed to and the extent of Fayed’s abuse.

Nicole, who shared her story publicly for the first time, said: “I really felt like people weren’t being honest and open, but it was hard to broach the subject.

“I didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t, there were a lot of rumors, people were talking.

“But for me his reputation was ‘he’s a bit of a bitch, he’s a bit touchy’. There were no serious allegations, because if that was the case, I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to work for him.”

Nicole, who worked for Fayed between 2005 and 2007, also spoke about the fear he instilled in those working under him: “There was a palpable fear, you could actually feel a buzz in the air…

“Every day you had that fear… (and thought) ‘how am I going to get through this day.’

“It was a struggle to get through the day with a smile.”

In a statement released after the BBC aired the documentary, Harrods said it is a very different place under its current owners.

The store has reached financial settlements with several plaintiffs and says it plans to reach new settlements soon.

Many women choose to pursue justice through an alternative legal process. One of the attorneys leading this effort is Dean Armstrong, who said his team has interviewed as many as 200 women.

He told BBC Breakfast that his legal team is putting together a “global claim” targeting Harrods, with incidents reported in several countries.

Mr Armstrong said there was a “whole system” in place to facilitate Fayed’s abuse at the store, which gave him the power to threaten women who threatened to speak out.

“I called him a monster last week,” the lawyer added. “I stand by that comment.”

All the women who shared their stories with the BBC had one thing in common: they urged others who may have been attacked at Harrods to come forward.

Jen assured victims who did not want to share their experiences that they would be heard and support would be provided, and she urged them to talk to someone about it.

“We can’t hold him accountable because he’s dead, but we can make sure people know the truth about this man,” she added.

“He wasn’t a sociable, charitable clown – he was a dangerous sexual predator.”