one A BBC documentary about sexual abuse by Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed between 1985 and 2010 found that more than 20 women testified that they were abused by Fayed, including five Women were raped by him. Since the show aired last Thursday, attorneys representing the victims have said there may be more victims.
This seems likely. As a former british editor vanity fair The people responsible for defending Fayed against the libel case he brought in the mid-90s, three of whom I know of, were unable to appear in the documentary, and anecdotal evidence from that period suggests that Fayed treated Harold as a mini-fiefdom, He had the power to take over Harrods. His abuse and the fear he instilled were open secrets.
He never suffered the consequences of his crimes, the scale of which was depicted in the BBC film Al Fayed: Harold’s Predator And puts him on the same level as Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. When they were finally jailed, Fayed died peacefully in London last year at the age of 94, with no legal trouble or any remorse and his estate still intact.
It says a lot about the power he wielded as Harrods boss, but also about the period in Britain before the awakening of the #MeToo movement, and the PR people, lawyers, security, manpower who paved the way for him and cleaned up after him Teams of resource officers and even doctors have allowed assaults and rapes to continue well into this century. Fayed did not prey on and terrorize more than 20 young women without significant support.
There is so much evidence, but he has only been seriously questioned about sexual abuse once, after a teenage assistant at Harrods complained to police about an attack in his office. At the time, she was 15 and he was almost 80. A huge blow. The charges were dropped due to her confusion about the day of the attack. Why this minor mistake would serve as the basis for not pursuing workplace assaults on minors is anyone’s guess, but it tastes bad.
That episode was a wake-up call for me. From 1995 to 1997, I investigated Fayed with Biddle & Co lawyer David Hooper, who prosecuted Fayed. vanity fair Our reporter Maureen Orth accused him in a profile of being a serial abuser and racist and spying on his employees, tapping their phones and using hidden cameras.
Hooper and I were not professional investigators, so by the summer of 1997 we had gathered enough evidence in these three areas, particularly the sexual abuse aspect, to feel confident that the trial would have a good outcome. important. In fact, Fayed was an out-and-out racist – once, his former security chief John Loftus reported, he asked a respected Harold cleaner, ” What is a black woman too fucking fat to clean doing here?
He used ex-police officers to place bugs on his targets’ homes and cell phones: we have a list of about 45 people whose phones were tapped, including Fayed’s deputy chairman Christoph Bettermann. Fayed used CCTV to spot possible victims on the floor of Harrods and spy on his closest colleagues. According to Bob Loftus, a former military policeman who was involved in the gruesome operation, he saw a prominent staff member having an affair with his secretary and showed the footage around .
The evidence keeps pouring in, but along the way we have to contend with the deceptions and threats spun by Fayed’s former police security forces. We had been worried about our witnesses and in the libel case we were forced to write to Fayed’s lawyers on 21 May 1997 stating that “witnesses were being pressured not to testify in a way that we would not tolerate and we Preserve this method of testimony”. The right to be brought to the attention of the presiding judge”. Ex-cops make threatening phone calls and knock on doors to warn young women that they will never work again, or worse. There was an attempt to bring criminal charges against Hooper and me. This is all standard for Fayed, which explains why many of the women featured in the BBC documentary are still nervous about speaking a year after his death, and why they need BBC director Erica Gornar and producers The person Cassie Cornish-Trestrel expresses her feelings so sensitively. It’s impossible to watch this film without seeing the lasting pain they go through.
Like Weinstein, Fayed’s sexual assault was vulgar, incompetent, and downright horrific. In 2022, I was contacted by a middle-aged British-born woman who had built a successful life in the United States but who, thirty years later, was still haunted by the abuse and abuse she had experienced at the hands of the Fayed family. In 1996, I learned that a young American woman interviewed as a designer for Fayed had been briefly imprisoned and subjected to such objectionable behavior that she was unable to swear an oath. However, we’ve learned that a close source has sent Fayed a cease and desist letter that we can request in Discovery, meaning he knows everything we know about this horrific incident.
What drives Fayed is the humiliation of others, whether he bribes Tory MPs to raise issues with parliament on his behalf and then gleefully exposes them, or senior managers at his businesses who are sacked and disgraced as a result of Fayed’s PR moves sweep the floor. For him, humiliating others is an affirmation of his own power, something Peter Morgan’s Netflix series frustratingly ignores crownA serial rapist in silk pajamas who asked his victims to call him “daddy” was transformed into an affable, harmless gangster.
By the summer of 1997, Fayed began taking action to resolve the case, primarily against former BBC journalist Michael Cole, whom he had played a major role in defending in multiple scandals. Cole met in a hammam with Sir Nicholas Coleridge, then-chief executive of Condé Nast. Wearing only towels, they discussed terms without the risk of being overheard. Although no agreement was reached, Cole felt able to declare in a letter in late June: “I have confirmed to you that Mr. Fayed would like to see things move forward… Blessed are the peacemakers, and I hope you Agree with this too.
As a reporter tasked with gathering evidence, I don’t.
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At the time, our investigation focused on Fayed’s use of doctors to test the sexual health of Harold’s young white female employees, who were told they were receiving medical care paid for by the company. “Medical care” included invasive tests, they received no warning, and highly private reports were sent directly to Fayed. Employees he suspected of being gay were told to get tested for AIDS and have their results sent to him.
At least five West Side doctors were involved in the medically questionable examinations. Three women, one of whom moved to Australia, surprisingly set up a women’s health and wellness clinic specializing in the treatment of menopause. All of them refused to help with the case, even though their examinations could actually be seen as precursors to Fayed’s sexual abuse. I feel strongly that what they did for Fayed and their refusal to provide evidence should be exposed in open court. This is one of the reasons I want to continue. The other is Diana, Princess of Wales, who had a developing relationship with Fayed’s son Dodi.
Our concern is that if we settle, she will never get evidence of his abuse and surveillance. It was therefore crucial that she understood that all of Fayed’s properties were wired for audio and video and that she could never be sure that she would be able to hold private conversations on his premises, let alone be able to do so without being spied on Take off your clothes. Through an intermediary, we express our fears. Diana’s friends Rosa Monckton and her husband Dominic Lawson also warned Diana many times. I don’t know if she paid attention.
As of July 1997, no agreement had been reached. The holidays were approaching and things were winding down, but on August 4 we learned that George Carman, the distinguished QC who was representing Al-Fayed at the time, paled as he read our rewritten defense statement, which included security chief Bowe Former secretary to Bob Loftus and Fayed. The judge postponed the trial for a year – to the fall of 1998 – and commented, even without the latest 800 pages of evidence: “If you only prove 75 percent of the evidence you have, you will win this case.” He described the new charges as “very serious and include conspiracy to commit several serious offences. It is a matter of public interest.”
Those were the lines in a four-page memo to my bosses in New York, when I laid out the key findings of our investigation, some of which involved serious crimes. But the key point I didn’t make clearly is that we have so much responsibility to the seven women who agreed to testify, which is arguably a bigger step than the women who appeared in the BBC documentary, although that too . It takes extraordinary courage. In his prime, Fayed was a ruthless enemy to anyone who crossed paths with him, and our witnesses had good reason to be afraid.
On August 31, Princess Diana and Dodi died in Paris, and everything was lost. Condé Nast boss Snewhouse decided to close the case immediately out of respect for the grieving father. No damages were paid at each party’s own expense, and we agreed to keep all evidence under lock and key. After the shocking deaths, it seemed like the right and humane decision. But that is not the case, as countless women have suffered since our case was resolved, including many who were raped by a man who seemed unaffected by grief or regret. I think we should act like a publication rather than a business and write another story to reveal our findings, but understandably we have no interest in returning to the subject of Mohamed Al Fayed. On the one hand, I did not agree with the settlement. In September 1997, all evidence boxes in my possession were placed in a secure environment that I controlled. Most of the material was generated by me and is my copyright.
I have since given journalists access to the report, including the makers of this important documentary, which finally exposed Mohamed Al Fayed after 27 years and gave the victims the voices they deserved.
