Money and power have enabled men throughout time to get away with the most appalling abuse and keep it quiet. The sheer number of allegations of sexual assault and rape that women have made in the past week against the late former owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed, (lawyers representing 37 alleged victims of sexual abuse spoke at a press conference on Friday) paint a picture of institutional intimidation and cover-up that extends well beyond the appalling behaviour of which the billionaire has been accused.
It ensured women were scared to speak about what allegedly happened to them not only while he was alive and able to face justice, but even after his death. It is only thanks to a painstaking BBC investigation that these multiple accounts have been brought to light. It is very likely that there are yet more cases.
Bruce Drummond, one of the barristers representing the women, has described it as “one of the worst cases of corporate sexual exploitation” that he has ever seen. Fayed is accused of raping and sexually abusing women mostly aged between 19 and 24, but also including girls as young as 15 or 16, at the Harrods store in London and at locations in Paris, including the Ritz hotel he owned. Former female employees have said he was known to rove the shop floor, looking for women to call up to his office. Some say they were subject to invasive gynaecological examinations as a condition of employment.
Fayed is alleged to have put security on some of his female employees, having them followed and their phone calls bugged. Those who dared complain were relentlessly threatened; one woman, who was 16 when Fayed is said to have sexually assaulted her, says that when one of Fayed’s senior security staff found out she had spoken to a journalist about his behaviour he called her to say he knew where her parents lived. Even a year after Fayed’s death, many of those affected were clearly terrified to speak to the BBC; according to the producer of the documentary, some of the women they approached were worried that the journalists involved might have been secretly working for his associates; it took immense bravery for them to come forward.
That the web of fear Fayed wove still exists today, seven years after the #MeToo moment led to a wave of women from different walks of life coming forward with allegations of rape and sexual assault, shows just how powerful money and influence can be. As Henry Porter, the former British editor of Vanity Fair – whom Fayed tried to sue for his journalistic investigations into him in the 1990s – writes in the Observer today, there would have been teams of people complicit in paving the way for Fayed to assault women and then cover it up. There were media reports on allegations of sexual assault while he was still alive, including of an assault as recently as 2008. He was seriously questioned by the police only once.
His death might mean he cannot face justice himself, but the female survivors of his abuse are considering a civil claim against Harrods, which Fayed sold in 2010. Big questions remain for those who aided and abetted Fayed at the abuse that was an open secret not just within the department store, but very likely at his other businesses. The former manager of the Fulham women’s football team has said female players were “protected” from him after his predilection for young women became obvious.
The temptation whenever terrible past events come to light is always to see them as part of history: such things could never happen today. But if there were a billionaire assaulting female employees today, with all his resources at his disposal, could he get away with the abuse and the cover-up? That the answer to that question is “very possibly” should chill us all.
