Teen reported al-Fayed 10 years earlier than police admit
Samantha-Jane Ramsay, 17, reported the Harrods owner for sexual abuse in 1995, to be told by police they would simply add her ‘to a pile of other female names’ who had made complaints.
The Metropolitan Police were aware of sexual abuse allegations concerning Mohamed Al Fayed at least a decade earlier than it previously admitted.
After a BBC investigation into the Egyptian businessman was broadcast in September, Scotland Yard said it had previously been approached by 21 women with complaints dating back to 2005.
This claim has been criticised by the family of a teenage victim who contacted the Met in 1995, only to be told that nothing could be done. Samantha-Jane Ramsay said at the time that officers told her they would simply add her “to a pile of other female names” who had made complaints about Al Fayed.
Scotland Yard said there was no digital record of Ramsay’s complaint, which may have been recorded on paper and not transferred to the force’s computer systems.
Ramsay died in a car crash in 2007, aged 27. It was deemed an accident, but relatives have questioned if it was deliberate, given a previous attempt at suicide. Emma Wills, her sister, said: “If the police had dealt with it properly back then her life would have been different … how many women could have been saved from his abuse?”
Ramsay moved to London at the age of 17 in 1995 from her home in Gosport, Hampshire, to work at Harrods. Five days after starting she was summoned to Al Fayed’s fifth-floor suite. He offered her a pounds 2,000 salary rise and job as an assistant manager in the designer clothes section.
A fortnight later the tycoon offered to double her pay for a job at his office in Park Lane, according to an account Ramsay gave to the News of the World in 1998. She recalled Al Fayed saying she would be required to take a medical and clean herself with Dettol. She said he grabbed her face, kissed her and sexually touched her without consent before giving her pounds 200. She told a supervisor, who replied: “Another one.” Ramsay was then sacked by Al Fayed.
The teenager reported what had happened to Marylebone police the following day. In her 1998 newspaper account, Ramsay described being told by officers: “We have files inches high on Mr Al Fayed but no proof. It would be your word against his.”
Commander Stephen Clayman of the Met said: “While we cannot change what has happened, we do acknowledge that trust and confidence is affected by our approach in the past and we are determined to do better.”
The Times
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