Hundreds of women have accused Mohammad al-Fayed of sexual assault and rape since a BBC documentary was broadcast in September. Among them, Jen* and Cheska recount the violence and threats they suffered as well as the silence from which the ex-owner of Harrods benefited.
“It seemed like a dream job,” says Jen. She was sixteen when she joined Harrods, a London department store then at the height of glamour. She remained there from 1986 to 1991.
Cheska Hill-Wood worked at age nineteen, in 1994, for the former businessman who died last year at age 94. Mohammad al-Fayed was present from their job interview. Cheska, then an art school student, was contacted by Harrods: she thinks al-Fayed’s team had spotted her photo in a magazine. “I guess my face matched his requirements. » She expected an “extraordinary” experience. “I was young and naive,” she blames herself.
After being hired, both Jen and Cheska underwent a gynecological exam by a doctor at Harrods. “He wanted to know if I was cleansays Jen, now 54 years old. When I asked him what that meant, he said he needed to know if I was a virgin. »
Terrified
Quickly, Mohammad al-Fayed demanded that she not have a boyfriend. “We weren’t allowed to have sex with anyone,” Jen says. Without wanting to “go into details”, she says she suffered, during her five years at Harrods, “several sexual assaults” and an attempted rape in Mohammad al-Fayed’s office and at his London residence on Park Lane. She didn’t tell anyone about it then. “I was ashamed and so terrified,” Jen says. Like so many other accusers, she talks about wiretapped phones and cameras in offices.
When, in secret, she has a romantic relationship, Mohammad al-Fayed summons her and gives her a list of places where she has gone as a couple. “It made me realize that I wasn’t paranoid: I was really being followed. “I was hoping I was the only one” experiencing this, Jen says. Now she is “horrified” to see the number of women accusing Mohammad al-Fayed.
She waited until September 19, the day the BBC documentary was broadcast, Al-Fayed : predator at Harrodsto tell her husband and parents the reality of her experience in the London department store.
“Absolute monster”
Cheska Hill-Wood immediately told her mother about the attack. She wanted to become an actress and Mohammad al-Fayed offered to introduce her to his son Dodi, a film producer. One evening after work, al-Fayed brings her up to his room to supposedly give her an audition for a Peter Pan film. She has to get into a swimsuit in front of a camera and recite a script excerpt, boiling down to: “Take me, take me please. » The sixty-year-old grabs her and kisses her by force. Cheska manages to escape and never sets foot in the office or Harrods again.
Both Jen and Cheska spoke quickly to the media. Jen testified for Vanity Fair as early as the 1990s. She demanded anonymity, yet a Harrods security official contacted her to threaten her and her family. Mohammad al-Fayed sued the magazine for defamation. An agreement was reached after the death of his son Dodi alongside Princess Diana in 1997 in Paris “out of respect for a grieving father”.
Cheska also agreed to testify in the 1990s in a documentary that was never broadcast. In 2017, she spoke again, and openly, for British television Channel Four. “But nothing happened after that. (…) The police did not pursue » Mohammad al-Fayed. She was desperate.
Both talk about their “anger” at his death last year. “This absolute monster died without being prosecuted,” exclaims Cheska, who is now 50 years old. She now hopes that those around him, “all those people who did the dirty work for him like medical appointments and recruiting women”, will face justice.
As soon as the BBC documentary was broadcast, the management of Harrods, which passed under the Qatari flag in 2010, “strongly condemned” the behavior of its former owner and apologized for the famous store for having at the time “abandoned (its) employees who were his victims.”
Since September 19, Harrods has engaged in discussions with “more than 250” of them to find an amicable agreement.
*Jen requested anonymity.
