Sixty women alleged Mohamed Al Fayed of sexual abuse, and lawyers say there could be more
The women have come forward as police investigate mounting sex assault and rape claims linked to Mohamed Al Fayed, and lawyers say there could be even more.
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Sixty women have come forward alleging they were sexually abused by the now-disgraced Mohamed Al Fayed.
“The response has simply been enormous... We can confirm that we now represent 60 survivors as part of our claim, with more to come,” the lawyers representing the women said in a statement on Friday.
It comes as members of Al-Fayed’s inner circle were subjected to increased pressure to reveal what they knew about the sexual assaults and rape allegations that have been levelled at the former Harrods boss.
London’s Met Police have vowed to “fully explore whether any other individuals could be pursued for any criminal offences” related to the horrors Fayed has been accused of, and are urging sex assault victims of his to come forward.
Police yesterday said it had identified 19 allegations against Fayed between 2005 and 2023. Three were of rape and 15 of sexual assault.
Fayed, who died last year, has been accused of raping five women and sexually abusing at least 15 others when they worked at the luxury department store, a BBC investigation revealed.
More than 20 women, all of whom were the late Fayed’s former employees, told a BBC documentary they were sexually assaulted by him and that Harrods covered up the abuse.
Fayed sold the famous London store in 2010 to the investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund for a reported £1.5 billion ($2.9 billion).
Harrods’ current owners said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations and that his victims had been failed.
“As a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise,” Harrods said in a statement.
It comes as a “dynamite” new testimony could blow the scandal wider and potentially drag in Fulham FC, which the business tycoon owned for 16 years, according to The Sun.
The lawyer representing Fayed’s victims, Barrister Dean Armstrong, claims the Egyptian billionaire “enabled a system that pervaded at Harrods”.
His victims are angry about the silence from those linked to the ex-Harrods chairman, including Harrods MC Michael Ward, Fayed’s long-term spokesman Michael Cole, and a female fixer dubbed “Fayed’s Ghislaine Maxwell”.
Mr Ward, who took over as MD in 2006, four years before Fayed sold the store, released a statement this week saying he denied any knowledge of Fayed’s “toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation and sexual misconduct”.
“We have all seen the survivors bravely speak about the terrible abuse suffered at the hands of Harrods former owner Mohamed Fayed. We failed our colleagues and for that we are deeply sorry,” Mr Ward said in a statement.
“As someone who has worked at Harrods since 2006, and therefore worked for Fayed until the change of ownership in 2010, I feel it is important to make it clear that I was not aware of his criminality and abuse.”
He has not answered any questions.
Mr Cole, who was a former BBC royal reporter and a spokesman for Fayed at the time the 1995 Vanity Fair article that alleged sexual misconduct and staff surveillance but nt sexsual assualt was published, has “gone to ground”, according to sources.
Mr War and Mr Cole have not been accused of any wrongdoing but given their proximity to Fayed, his victims want answers about what happened back then.
Questions have been also raised about Fayed’s “key fixer”, who investigators were told found young women for him to abuse.
“She worked for Fayed and became his key fixer. She helped him find women. She was even interviewed once by the police but it came to nothing,” a source said.
“Everyone knew what she was doing.”
More than 200 women have come forward to the Survivors group saying they were sexually assaulted by Fayed.
Investigators are officially working with 37 women and are actively probing more than 60 claims.
One woman said Fayed lured her to his central London apartment on Park Lane and raped her when she was 16, not long after she starting working at Harrods.
“He tried to pressure me into having sex with him, but I kept saying now,” Kate, not her real name, said.
“He became angry, the doors were locked and I couldn’t get out. He raped me.”
Kate has become the six woman to publicly accuse the Egyptian billionaire of rape.
TWIST IN RAPE SCANDAL OF DIANA’S CONFIDANT AL FAYED
Britain’s criminal prosecution body had two previous opportunities to prosecute Fayed, accused by multiple women of sexual assault and rape.
A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesperson referred to two prior instances when Al-Fayed, who died last year, was accused of sexual offences.
“We reviewed files of evidence presented by the police in 2009 and 2015”, said the spokesperson, who asked not to be named.
In 2008, Fayed was accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl and CPS reviewed evidence in 2009. In 2013, he was accused of raping a woman, a claim investigated in 2015.
In both instances, the CPS said there was no “realistic prospect of conviction” and did not bring charges.
“To bring a prosecution the CPS must be confident there is a realistic prospect of conviction – in each instance, our prosecutors looked carefully at the evidence and concluded this wasn’t the case,” the spokesperson said.
In July 2023, Harrods began settling claims with women who came forward with claims of sexual abuse by Fayed from the 1990s and 2000s.
Fayed died last year at the age of 94.
The Egyptian billionaire was a prominent figure in British life for decades and had close ties to the Royal Family.
A confidant of the late Princess Diana, his son Dodi died alongside her in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Fayed later accused the Royal Family of being involved in Princess Diana’s death.
At the time, Reuters reported that “beset by grief and an overwhelming sense of injustice, Fayed spent millions on legal battles to ensure there was an inquest.”
He did numerous interviews in the years after their deaths, and his repeated allegations led the British government to open Operation Paget, an investigation in 2007 into Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed’s deaths.
– with AFP
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Originally published as Sixty women alleged Mohamed Al Fayed of sexual abuse, and lawyers say there could be more