More than 400 women have accused the late Egyptian businessman, ex-owner of London luxury store Harrods, of sexual violence. Two of them have agreed to recount their ordeal.
Since the broadcasting of a BBC documentary last September, hundreds of women accuse Mohamed Al-Fayed of sexual assault and rape. Among them, Jen (first name changed) and Cheska tell AFP about the violence and threats they suffered.
“It sounded like a dream job“says Jen, who was sixteen when she joined Harrods, the London department store then at the height of glamour. She stayed there from 1986 to 1991.
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Cheska Hill-Wood worked for the former businessman, who died last year aged 94, when she was nineteen, in 1994. Mohamed Al-Fayed was present right from their job interview. The young woman, then an art school student, had been contacted by Harrods: she thinks Al-Fayed’s team had spotted her photo in a magazine. “I guess my face matched his requirements“. She was expecting an experience “extraordinary“. “I was young and naive“she blames herself.
After being hired, both Jen and Cheska underwent a gynecological examination by a Harrods doctor. He wanted to know if I was “clean“, says Jen, now 54. “When I asked him what it meant, he said he had to know if I was a virgin.“.
“I was ashamed and too terrified.”
Soon, Mohamed Al-Fayed demanded that she not have a boyfriend.”We weren’t allowed to have sex with anyone“says Jen. Without wanting to “to go into details“, she says that during her five years at Harrods, “several 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 too terrified“says Jen. Like so many other accusers, she recalls tapped phones and cameras in the office. When, on the sly, she had a romantic relationship, Mohamed Al-Fayed summoned her and drew up a list of the places she had been as a couple. “It made me realize that I wasn’t paranoid: I was really being followed.“.
“I was hoping to be the only one“to experience this,” says Jen. Now she’s “horrified“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 about the reality of her experience at Harrods.
“This absolute monster”
Cheska Hill-Wood immediately told her mother about her attack. She wanted to become an actress and Mohamed Al-Fayed had offered to introduce her to his son Dodi, a film producer.
One evening, after work, Al-Fayed took her up to his room to supposedly audition her for a film about Peter Pan. She has to get into her bathing suit in front of a camera and recite an excerpt from the script, boiling down to: “Take me, take me please“.
The sixty-year-old grabs her and kisses her by force. Cheska managed to flee and never set foot in the office or Harrods again. Both Jen and Cheska were quick to speak to the media. Jen testified for Vanity Fair as early as the 90s. She demanded anonymity, yet a Harrods security manager contacted her to threaten her and her family.
Al-Fayed sued the magazine for defamation. A settlement was reached after the death of his son Dodi alongside Princess Diana in Paris in 1997.”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 opened up 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” at his death last year. “This absolute monster died without being prosecuted“says Cheska, now 50. She now hopes that those around her, “all those people who did the dirty work for him, like medical appointments and recruiting women“will have to face justice.
As soon as the BBC documentary was broadcast, the management of Harrods, which went under Qatari flag in 2010, “strongly condemned“the behavior of its former owner, and apologized to the famous store for having at the time “abandoned (its) employees who were his victims“.
Since September 19, Harrods has been in discussions with “more than 250“of them to reach an amicable agreement.