Alice, not her real name, said she received a phone call from Fayed’s head of security after, in 1995, he found out she had spoken to a journalist about their boss’s behaviour. She says she was 16 years old when Fayed sexually assaulted her.
“He said that I wasn’t to be involved in the article and that, if I went against his advice, I should be aware that he knew where my parents lived – It turned me cold.”
Alice didn’t speak about her experiences again until she gave an interview to the recently.
Fayed also corrupted the store’s HR department, which played a role in promoting young women from the shop floor to work in his executive suite – aware of his interest in them.
“We all watched each other walk through that door thinking, ‘you poor girl, it’s you today’ and feeling utterly powerless to stop it,” recalls Alice.
We now know that in Gemma’s case a senior member of the Harrods HR department was present in 2009 when lawyers destroyed evidence of his sexual misconduct against her. This included messages he had sent her and tapes of nasty voicemails.
Gemma began working as one of Fayed’s personal assistants in 2007. She says Fayed raped her at his villa in France after she woke to find him next to her bed.
After it was over, she cried while he got up and told her aggressively to wash herself with Dettol. “Obviously he wanted me to erase any trace of him being anywhere near me,” she explains.
