More than 400 women accuse the late Egyptian businessman, former owner of the London luxury store Harrods, of sexual violence. Two of them agreed to tell their ordeal.
Since the broadcast of a BBC documentary last September, hundreds of women have accused Mohamed Al-Fayed of sexual assault and rape. Among them, Jen (first name has been changed) and Cheska told AFP about the violence and threats they suffered.
«It seemed like a dream job“, says Jen, who was sixteen when she joined Harrods, a London department store then at the height of glamour. She remained there from 1986 to 1991.
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Cheska Hill-Wood worked at nineteen, in 1994, for the former businessman who died last year at 94. Mohamed Al-Fayed was present from their job interview. The young woman, then an art school student, had been contacted by Harrods: she thinks that Al-Fayed’s team had spotted her photo in a magazine. “I guess my face matched his requirements“. She expected an experience “extraordinaire». «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 “clean“, says Jen, now 54 years old. “When I asked him what that meant he said he had to know if I was a virgin».
“I was ashamed and I was too terrified”
Quickly, Mohamed Al-Fayed demands that she not have a boyfriend. “We weren’t allowed to have sex with anyone“, says Jen. Without wanting “go into details“, she says she suffered, during her five years at Harrods, “multiple sexual assaults» and an attempted rape in Mohamed Al-Fayed’s office and at his London residence on Park Lane.
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She didn’t tell anyone about it then. “I was ashamed and I was so terrified“, says Jen. Like so many other accusers, she talks about wiretapped phones and cameras in offices. When, in secret, she has a romantic relationship, Mohamed 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 hoped to be the only one» to experience this, says Jen. Now she ishorrified» to see the number of women accusing Mohamed Al-Fayed. She waited until September 19, the day the BBC documentary “Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods” was broadcast, to tell her husband and parents the reality of her experience at Harrods.
“This absolute monster”
Cheska Hill-Wood immediately told her mother about the attack. She wanted to become an actress and Mohamed 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 change into a swimsuit in front of a camera and recite an excerpt from the script, summarizing: “Take me, take me please».
The sixty-year-old grabs him and kisses him 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 has testified for Vanity Fair as far back as the 1990s. She demanded anonymity, yet a Harrods security official contacted her to threaten her and her family.
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 bereaved father».
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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» Mohamed Al-Fayed. She was desperate.
Both recount their “anger» upon 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 her, “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 to the famous store for having at the time “abandoned (his) employees who were his victims».
Since September 19, Harrods has been in discussions with “more than 250» among them to find an amicable agreement.
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