World Of Secrets - Al Fayed, Predator at Harrods: 5. Silenced no more

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Mohamed Al Fayed sells Harrods and retreats into a world of luxury villas and yachts. But will the women continue to stay silent about their allegations? Their stories weren’t all heard before his death but now they come together to speak out. Would the past catch up with a man who had now been portrayed in The Crown, the drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II? This season of World of Secrets is about sexual abuse, and includes descriptions which some listeners might find distressing. For a list of organisations in the UK that can provide support for survivors of sexual abuse, go to bbc.co.uk/actionline.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hi, Neil Rizal here. I'm one of the producers on season four of World of Secrets. I'm pleased to tell you that season five is almost ready. It'll launch in October. I can't tell you much about it. It is World of Secrets after all. But you can be first to know by subscribing or following. Episodes will appear automatically wherever you get your podcasts. A warning before we get started. This series is about sexual abuse and includes descriptions which some listeners might find distressing.

It's early summer 2009. A large truck pulls up outside a London law office. Look, we just need to do this quickly and quietly. I didn't want a big fuss, I just wanted to get out. Gemma, the 26-year-old, now former personal assistant to Mohamed Al-Fayed. She is quit after enduring months of abuse in the office and on the road, including, she says, being raped in Al-Fayed's Parisian mansion, Villa Windsor. While Gemma gave Harrods evidence of Al-Fayed's sexual misconduct, at the time she didn't feel able to disclose the more serious allegations.

There was never an investigation done. There was never any consequence for his actions. Gemma's with her lawyer. Outside, men are getting out of the truck. They're here to seal a legal deal with Al-Fayed, but there are strict conditions set by the lawyers. I needed to have nothing, no evidence of working there, no evidence of what had happened to me. Gemma tells us that they start gathering documents, her Harrods employment contract, phone records, medical reports, any evidence of her time there and of the sexual abuse.

Including tapes I had of him inappropriately asking me to do things, inviting me for showers. My phone had messages and voicemails, really quite nasty voicemails on them. It all goes outside to the truck. We placed everything in. It was shredded in front of us, including my laptop, my phone. Everything was destroyed. Gemma says two of El-Faed's representatives, including someone from HR, stand watching.

The evidence destroyed, Al-Faed's men authorise a payment to Gemma and warn her to keep to the terms. I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody. I was to keep it quiet. If she didn't, she feared there'd be comeback. And obviously, you know, I had no job,

so it was quite terrifying. The shredding truck drives off and Jenna draws a thick line under this chapter in her life. She sells her car, gets a new phone, moves house, and for a while, leaves the UK entirely. She wants as much distance as possible between herself and Mohamed El-Fayed. Another victim silenced?

Not quite. This is World of Secrets, Season 4. Al-Fayed, predator at Harrods. From the BBC World Service. A story about power and control at the top of British society. I'm Shaima Khalil. I'm Cassie Cornish-Trestrail. Episode 5. Silenced. No more. Time passes.

In September 2010, Mohamed Al-Fayed celebrates his 80th birthday in typical style. His family throws a surprise party in Harrods. Celebrities pay their respects, including video tributes from actor Hugh Grant, CNN's Larry King, and the New York property developer Donald Trump. Guests walk off with gifts, including mugs, with Al-Fayed's head superimposed on a picture of Superman.

Al-Fayed is indeed flying high. He's recently sold Harrods for a reported £1.5 billion, more than US$2 billion. And he's seeing off another media investigation into his predatory behavior. This time, without even knowing about it. His exceptionally litigious reputation is enough. Britain's Channel 4 cancels a documentary containing allegations of sexual abuse. These revealing words from Al-Fayed, a CNN interview from long ago still apply.

Fayed's 80th birthday begins a long farewell from public life, almost like he's cashing out, ready for a luxurious retirement. he's cashing out, ready for a luxurious retirement. Three years later, he sells his premiership football club Fulham for around 200 million pounds. That's 300 million US dollars. He spends more and more time at Barrow Green Court, his lavish 17th century estate outside London, complete with tennis court and swimming pool. Troublesome news occasionally penetrates the red-bricked walls. The Metropolitan Police is reviewing an allegation of rape made against the former owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al-Fayed. The complaint against the businessman was first made in October 2013,

but after an investigation, no action was taken. But these allegations, like so many others, go nowhere. And so, more than a decade passes. A time of peaceful sleeps. And yet, deep down, Al-Faid knows the damage he's done to some. And yet, deep down, Al-Fayed knows the damage he's done to some. Paris, 1991. Al-Fayed boards his private jet, a Gulfstream G550.

Its white wings and twin engines are bedecked with the gold lettering of his personalised registration, M-Mumu. With him, his personal assistant, Safaya. I was getting more and more upset and with this screaming and I think he was trying to sort of calm me down. She's in shock. She says Al-Fayed has tried to rape her at his lavish Parisian home, Villa Windsor. I was so upset with him, you know, trying to rape me. And he scared me and I was terrified of him

and I was just starting to get more and more, you know, just scared and unhappy and I think he could see it. He could see it. Once they're airborne, Al-Fayed hands her a gift. A book on Harrods, and he was very pleased with it. He said, this is for you. One day you can show this to your grandchildren, and you can tell your grandchildren what a monster I was.

She can't believe her ears. So he knew. He knew what he was. He knew what he was doing. Why would he say that to me? Why would he say that to me? Why? He knew he was an evil man.

He knew. Sophia's been his PA for three years, but this is the last straw. I got back and decided enough was enough. I can't do this anymore. I cannot live my life like this anymore. I was a nervous wreck. I got no confidence. I feel like I was having some kind of breakdown. I was a nervous wreck. I got no confidence. I was, I feel like I was having some kind of breakdown.

I was shaking constantly. I was, I just felt sick all the time. I felt like, just ghastly. I just had to go. She tells Al-Fayed to his face in his opulent Harrods office, the scene of so much abuse. He's by turns shocked, sad, angry and dismissive. Finally, he says,

just get out and return the car I gave you. So I did. I was like a zombie. I was like walking, I was shaking. I left and just went downstairs all on my own. Just went and got in my car, parked it in the car park underground and just left it. That was it. I felt like I got away. I don't have to do this anymore. I'm free. I'm free. But I was also just so exhausted with it all,

just broken, totally broken. Sophia does the same thing that Gemma would do more than 15 years later when she finally liberates herself. She leaves the UK for a while, puts some distance between her and her abuser. But with Sophia, there is no payoff, no settlement. Her secrets are hers to keep. Or not.

What do Tiger Woods, Mark Zuckerberg and Taylor Swift all have in common? Well, their lives and fortunes are all being discussed on Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, motives and the money of some of the world's wealthiest individuals. I'm Zing Zing, and each week my co-presenter Simon Jack and I take a closer look at the world's mega rich, and we try to decide whether they're good, bad, or just another billionaire. From celebs and CEOs to spot stars and tech titans, find out how billionaires made their money and how they use it. Good, bad billionaire from the BBC World Service. All episodes of season one and two are available now, wherever you get your BBC

podcasts. And click follow or subscribe so you never miss a new episode. The fall of Mohammed Al-Fayed's empire of silence has some surprising roots. For many, Netflix means one show. The Crown. The Crown. By 2020, Netflix reckons 73 million households worldwide have watched at least some of the series, a drama that follows Britain's royal family through the decades. By 2022, the story reaches Diana, Princess of Wales. I'm afraid you've got me?

Your Royal Highness. This is Diana's imagined first meeting with Muhammad Al-Fayed at a royal horse show hosted by Harrods. Diana. Muhammad, but you must call me Mumu. Why must I call you Mumu? All my friends do. Gosh, we're friends already? That was quick. Too quick? Maybe a little too quick. Sophia is gobsmacked. It just makes him look sort of funny and gregarious and he could turn that on, but he wasn't. He was... He was a horrible monster.

Yes, for moments he can turn that on when it suits him. Or if he wants something. The Crown is Al-Fayed's introduction to a whole new generation. Many Netflix viewers have never heard of him. The show goes on to tell Al-Fayed's backstory, his humble beginnings in Egypt, buying the Ritz Paris, then Harrods, then restoring King Edward VIII's Parisian residence, Villa Windsor.

The show aims to get every detail right. And yet, there's no mention of Al-Fayed's serial sexual abuse of women. It's a total injustice if he's remembered like this. If he's remembered like this from people watching The Crown, that is outrageous. It's horrible. And he shouldn't be remembered like that. Safaya will not let this happen.

It's 2018. Saf's at home, updating her CV. I have no career anymore now. I had to change everything. It's been 27 years since she left Harrods. She never got back into fashion. Never got a chance to fulfil that teenage dream of being a buyer. I'd lost that. He'd taken that from me. He'd just promised me everything and gave me nothing but... ..bad memories.

She keeps those memories to herself. It's something I buried deep down and I just didn't think there was any point. I've moved on with that part of my life and I've got a lot stronger and I've got myself together and I don't just never wanted to talk about it. Sophia's focusing on the future, getting a new job. When her husband Keaton offers to help with the CV, it's a big yes. Keaton's a TV producer. He knows how to present information in a grabby way. And he saw that I'd worked at Harrods and I hadn't really spoken to him much about it.

So he moved it and tinkered my CV around and polished it and showed it to me, sort of really pleased. There, right at the top, it reads, Personal Assistant to Mohamed Al-Fayed, chairman of Harrods. I felt so angry and I felt so annoyed. I didn't want this man to be the highlight of my CV. I just, I spent years forgetting about him and putting it behind me. And then suddenly there it was, blazoned across the top of my CV. And so poor Keaton had done this and I just was like I got really cross and I was just like why why have you done that why have you done that and he was didn't understand why I was getting so

angry and I sort of stormed off and then he pushed it a bit further and came up and said what's going on here that something's not right and then I just came tumbling out and I started crying and I told him everything and I think he was horrified and and and so he was sort of said you need to talk to someone about this Sophia finds strength in Keaton's support and in other women whose stories are in the air the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has denied claims that he raped three women. I mean, the Me Too movement just brings hope. And the fact that women began to speak out in droves and refuse to be silent about sexual assault and harassment.

Now every voice matters and survivors deserve to be heard and believed. Well, the response has been nothing short of cataclysmic. People that want to reach out and identify and say, Me too. The whole Me too thing was going on as well, and I know that other girls have been through stuff like this with other people, and these things need to be exposed now. These men need to be taken down. They need to be exposed now, these men need to be taken

down, they need to be shown for the monsters that they are and no other girl should have to go through this ever again and we owe it to each other and to the sisterhood and to all the girls to be strong for each other so I felt like I had to speak up about it and that's how it sort of, the ball started rolling. and that's how it sort of, the ball started rolling. Sophia finds a lawyer and begins the slow process of gathering evidence to sue Harrods. Keaton is just as committed. He spends long hours using his journalism background

to track down other women abused by Al-Fayed, including all the women in this podcast. He's shocked at how long his list becomes. It takes Safaya and Harrods five years to reach an agreement. In 2023, the store expresses regret but admits no liability. In the months that follow, Harrods begins settling claims with most of the other women in this podcast. It looks like Al-Fayed himself might finally be held accountable. Just as we came on air tonight, it's been confirmed that the self-made Egyptian billionaire... Mohammed Al-Fayed has died. He was 94.

The former Herod's owner courted the establishment, befriended the royal family and longed for British citizenship. August 30th, 2023. The obituaries are largely silent about the history of allegations against Al-Fayed. Michael Cole, who worked in Harrods Public Affairs from 1988 to 1998, spoke to Sky News. He was a tremendous life force. He was obviously controversial. But I feel that he did more good in this world than all his critics combined. And the people who worked for him and the people who were his customers and the fans of his football club,

they know the real Mohammed and they cherished his friendship and they cherished what he did. It's not fair that he got to die with the legacy he did. Gemma, who more than a decade before had shredded all evidence of her connection to Al-Fayed, surprises herself with her reaction to the news. I waited so many years for him to die because I thought that would give me the closure and the peace that I needed

and actually, when he died, it just made me angry. When he died, it just made me angry. He's basically telling me to relax and... He's saying, it's important for you to make love and relax. Today, Gemma is reading transcripts of tapes she made when Alphired crept into her room at Villa Windsor. And he kept saying, relax, please relax. How can you relax when you're in that situation? He was in the bed, on the bed.

He was just... I don't know. Horrible. Horrible don't know, horrible. Horrible, horrible. She'd grown so fearful of Al-Fayed that she'd begun carrying a small recorder to capture his lecherous behaviour. I said, I just want to go to sleep on my own, he said. Oh, God.

I told you don't come to Paris if you're not going to make love with me. She's never agreed to that. For her, this is a work trip. He proceeded to threaten me with my job. Sheesh. I thought I'd lost these transcripts, but actually what I did have was the transcriptions sent to my lawyer in my sent items of my email account at the time.

Seeing them again is painful. I never spoke about it until now. I've kept it quiet from friends, family, my husband. All these years, not being able to talk about something that's so unfair, like, so unfair, to make somebody go through something like that and then expect them not to talk about it, it's cruel. The allegations in this podcast are part of a wider BBC investigation In total

we've spoken to more than 20 women whose claims of humiliation abuse and intimidation by Mohamed Al-Fayed stretch more than 25 years. At the time of recording, we've heard five separate allegations of rape and a sexual assault of a victim as young as 15. Mohamed Al-Fayed's death has opened a new chapter in the fight for justice.

There can now be no criminal liability for him. But many women are now preparing civil claims against Harrods. Maria Mulla is a barrister representing some of them. The case, she says, is not just about what Al-Fayed did. It's about the system that enabled him. The legal action that we are contemplating is about the liability of a corporation for failing to protect its employees.

And we're also looking at the system that there was in the background where these ladies literally had nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to. You know, they couldn't even have an honest conversation on the phone without it being recorded and then listened for its content. Maria says more women who once worked at Harrods approach her firm almost every week. They are not doing this because they want some kind of attention. These women are not motivated by money.

They are doing this because for many years they've been absolutely petrified to talk about these things to anybody else. They hear that other women are starting to talk and share their story and they want to be part of this movement of holding people accountable for what has happened to them and trying to make sure that these things don't happen again in the future for their own children and for their children. The current owners of Harrods sent us this comment in response to our series.

We are utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohammed Al-Fayed. These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated, and we condemn them in the strongest terms. We also acknowledge that during this time, as a business, we failed our employees who were his victims, and for this we sincerely apologise. who were his victims, and for this we sincerely apologise. The Harrods of today is a very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Al-Fayed between 1985 and 2010. It is one that seeks to put the welfare of our employees

at the heart of everything we do. This is why, since new information came to light in 2023 about historic allegations of sexual abuse by Al-Fayed, it has been our priority to settle claims in the quickest way possible, avoiding lengthy legal proceedings for the women involved. This process is still available for any current or former Harrods employees. While we cannot undo the past, we have been determined to do the right thing as an organisation, driven by the values we hold today. While ensuring that such behaviour can never be repeated in the future. With more women coming forward, this story is, in some ways, just beginning. And for some of those we've spoken to, the silence and the taboo are finally broken. I'm not crying because I'm sad, I'm crying because I'm relieved.

Having the chance to talk about it now is important for me, for my healing. I think I would regret not being involved because I've spent so many years being quiet and silent and not speaking up and I hope talking about it now helps that we can all start feeling better and healing from it you've been listening to episode 5, Season 4 of World of Secrets. Al-Fayed, Predator at Harrods. It's a long-form audio production for the BBC World Service. It's presented by me, Shaima Khalil. And me, Cassie Cornish-Trestrail.

The producer is Sally Abrahams. The senior producer is Neil Rizal. The series editor is Matt Willis. Engineering by Neil Churchill and Nigel Appleton. Special thanks to series consultant Keaton Stone, director Erica Gournaud, and executive producer Mike Radford. The BBC World Service senior podcast producer is Anne Dixie. The podcast commissioning editor is John

Manel. If you've been affected by any of the issues in this series, please contact support organisations in your own country. For a list of organisations in the UK that can provide support for survivors of sexual abuse, go to bbc.co.uk forward slash action line. I hope you're enjoying World of Secrets. Subscribe or follow now so you get all episodes in our next investigations automatically. And if you haven't already, check out our previous three seasons. For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures.

And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? I'm Una Chaplin, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America, and the battlefield was Hollywood. All episodes of Hollywood Exiles, from the BBC World Service and CBC,

are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts.