Barristers acting for 37 women announce intention to bring civil case against Harrods over late owner’s alleged abuse
Mohammed Al Fayed. Speaking at a press conference in London, the barrister Dean Armstrong KC said he had ‘never seen a case as horrific as this’.
The former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed was a “monster” whose sexual abuse of women in his employ could be compared with the cases of Jimmy Savile, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, lawyers representing dozens of survivors have said.
Speaking at a press conference in London on Friday, barristers acting for 37 of the women announced their intention to bring a civil case against Harrods, the luxury London department store, where they said a system was put in place to protect Fayed during his years of abuse.
“We will say it plainly: Mohamed Al Fayed was a monster,” said Dean Armstrong KC, adding that he had “never seen a case as horrific as this”.
He compared Fayed’s case with that of Savile because “in this case as in that, the institution, we say, knew about the behaviour”. He added: “Epstein because, in that case, as in this, there was a procurement system in place to source the women and girls – as you know there are some very young victims. And Weinstein, because it was a person at the very top of the organisation who was abusing his power.”
The announcement of the survivors’ planned civil case against Harrods comes after allegations of sexual assault against Fayed were aired in a BBC documentary on Thursday.
One woman gave a harrowing account of the abuse she suffered at Fayed’s hands, telling reporters she “walked into a lion’s den” when she accepted a job with him. She said working for him had involved a “layer of cover-ups, deceit, lies, manipulation, humiliation, and gross sexual misconduct”.
Referring to Fayed, who died last year aged 94, as “the chairman”, she said he “preyed on the most vulnerable; those of us who needed to pay the rent and some of us who didn’t have parents to protect them”. She called him a “highly manipulative” figure who initially went out of his way to make her feel safe and comfortable at work.
“Mohamed Al Fayed, a sick predator, lured me in by using the same modus operandi he used time and time again. I was subjected to Aids and STD testing without consent, and now believe in hindsight, I was checked for my purity.”
Once he had lured her in, she said, Fayed started to use private meetings to subject her to an escalating campaign of physical abuse. This culminated with her being summoned to his private apartment one night “on the pretext of a job review”.
She said: “The door was locked behind me … I saw his bedroom door partially open – there were sex toys on view. I felt petrified. I perched myself at the very end of the sofa and then … Mohamed Al Fayed, my boss, the person I worked for, pushed himself on to me.”
She said that after she was able to fight to free herself from his attack, “he laughed at me. He then composed himself and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never to breathe a word of this to anyone. If I did, I would never work in London again and he knew where my family lived. I felt scared and sick.”
Responding to the BBC documentary, Harrods said: “We are utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed. These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms. We also acknowledge that during this time as a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise.
“The Harrods of today is a very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed between 1985 and 2010, it is one that seeks to put the welfare of our employees at the heart of everything we do.” The store has been contacted for comment on the survivors’ latest comments.