Al Fayed shows how my generation got it wrong
Testimonies about Mohamed Al Fayed’s alleged assaults and rapes defy belief. Or would, if they were not relatable to accounts of Weinstein, Epstein and Savile. A man with financial power and influential connections surrounds himself with security, PR expertise, complaisant executives and top law firms. With his wealth he could buy willing sex, but takes his pleasure with a much younger woman or girl who is awed by his father-figure magnificence and, even better, shocked and scared by his forcefulness.
The emperor picks a fresh female body like a roadside flower, and feels safe. He knows that embarrassment, shame and irrational guilt may reduce the effect of her complaints, and hearers dismiss her as a venal fantasist. Or he can scare her with lawyers, or security men and colleagues warning her that “a girl alone in London” - or Paris or St Tropez with her passport taken away - could meet with a nasty accident. One victim, who had just turned 16, said she was told that the boss knew where her parents lived.
The long timescale of this scandal runs from the 1980s into this century. In 1995, Vanity Fair wrote about Al Fayed and, though it did not allege actual rape, a settled libel lawsuit led to the complaint being locked away. The death of Diana and Dodi tamped down critical voices for a while, with pity for the bereaved father and livelier interest in his paranoid whodunit theories. In 2009 Gemma, allegedly raped in his St Tropez apartment, said she offered tapes and transcripts of his behaviour but ended up watching lawyers shredding the lot in front of a senior Harrods HR official.
Like Savile, he was protected until death by a rampart not only of money but also of lofty influence. Both were pictured with senior royals, just as Epstein had Andrew and Clinton, and Weinstein an honorary CBE and a handshake with the late Queen. Establishment cowardice helped, so did law: step forward any solicitor who ever presented scared young women with non-disclosure agreements to sign.
Although the new BBC report is full, and includes barristers predicting a “knock on the door” for some of the alleged rapist’s enablers, press and media don’t come out of this as fearless heroes. Nor does Netflix’s The Crown, which enraged victims by depicting Al Fayed as simply an amusingly ridiculous social climber. No hint of the demonic reality of a man who paid a tame Harley Street doctor to carry out sexual-health checks on young women he picked from the shop floor for “promotion”, clicked a remote control to lock his private door behind them as they entered, and ordered them to wash with Dettol afterwards to remove evidence.
He is extreme, but merely the latest in a line of arrogant, selfish, degenerate men of power: priests and teachers, academics, even aid workers like the ghastly Roland van Hauwermeiren at Oxfam. There is still much to be unravelled. Harrods moved fast with apology and compensation but some of the enablers must still be around - figures maybe in human resources and security, and any doctor who carried out intimate examinations of young women under the pretext of free health insurance, then broke medical confidentiality by reporting the result to their boss.
Where are they all? Step forward! At least the PR Max Clifford, who joked about defending Al Fayed, died in prison as a predator himself. But let’s hear from Michael Cole, close loyal employee of the boss he praised as a “family man”. Last week the interviewer Sophia Money-Coutts remembered how Cole warned that Al Fayed would be inappropriate, and demanded “assurance that none of this lighthearted banter will make it into your article”. The young journalist “laughed it off, as women have had to do with such personal questions for centuries”. (Cole was approached for comment.)
And that brings me, as a still older woman, to an apology on behalf of our generation. Many of us, while horrified by rapists and extreme sexual pests, rolled our eyes at some #MeToo accusations and the subsequent wave of cultural and legal squeamishness. We sighed at claims relating to mere wolf-whistles, office party larks or tasteless compliments about a blouse. Old warriors, we recalled the looming and pestering of our early career, whether as gap-year temps (it got quite fruity in one Telex office), or in offices and newsrooms. We wondered what happened to female robustness: shrugs, cold stares, snarls of “in your dreams, professor!”. We feared that the new sensitivity would ruin workplace comradeship and reinforce the image of us as helpless fragile flowers. Comedy had long fed richly on dirty old men and sometimes we joined jokes about park flashers as harmless old gits or famous men as “not safe in taxis”.
Well, mea culpa. Tolerance has faded for good, jokes died: shame in a way, some were good, and Benny Hill was funnier than Ben Elton. Those old gags worked because of an overarching belief that, with rare exceptions, dirty old men wouldn’t get far, turn violent, or be protected if they did. Rapists were bad dates or backstreet demons, not gents of distinction.
Now we know better. We also understand the slippery slope: PC Wayne Couzens got away with indecent exposure before going on to rape and murder, and criminology confirms that such escalation is far from rare.
We also know, by the way, that porn use - as freely giggled about for years in shows such as Friends - is always a serious red flag. Monsieur Pelicot, who offered his drugged wife to neighbours, was a keen user. Joke very much over.
The Times
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