Documentary makers have described how they uncovered allegations of rape and sexual harassment against Mohammed Al Fayed in the 1990s but were unable to report them due to victims’ fears.
Dorothy Byrne, former head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, who edited ITV’s 1997 documentary The Big Story: Sex Lies and Audiotapes, said the programme’s makers were made aware of sex crime claims but victims were too afraid and intimidated to give their accounts.
“We knew that there were these stories of him raping women, but at that point he was alive and women were really frightened,” she told i.
“They were afraid that he was very powerful. One of them said that after she complained about him raping her she suddenly was taken to a police station and accused of stealing from him.
“He should have been in prison for decades. He was a violent rapist who then threatened women, and he was at the heart of the British establishment.”
A BBC investigation published last week revealed that more than 20 women had accused Fayed, who died last year at the age of 94, of sexual assault. Five women have alleged that he raped them.
Harrods said last week it is “utterly appalled” by the allegations and said it is a “very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Fayed between 1985 and 2010”.
Over two decades before the BBC investigation, The Big Story exposed allegations that the billionaire owner of the luxury department store had assaulted staff and bugged workers’ and trade union officials’ phone calls, with recordings of the covert surveillance aired on television for the first time.
Giovannni Ulleri, a co-producer on The Big Story said one alleged victim the documentary makers spoke to told them she had been raped by Fayed while she was a teenager.
She was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), with her parents bought a house by the Egyptian businessman, he claimed.
However, amid repeated legal threats from Fayed, the rape allegation was not aired, Mr Ulleri said.
Instead, four women that did feature in The Big Story in 1997 alleged that they were repeatedly groped, subjected to crude remarks and promised rewards in return for sex.
One woman told the programme Fayed “would come and grope me and make obscene remarks about my sexual life, my private parts.”
Another said: “When I was in Mr Al Fayed’s office, he kissed me. He tried to kiss me on the mouth and I moved my face. He kissed me on the cheek, and he really repulsed me.”
The documentary also reported that young women who worked for Fayed were sent to a private clinic to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
A whistleblower security guard, Bob Loftus, provided the ITV documentary team with recordings of phone conversations of Harrods workers that Al Fayed had secretly taped.
“He had a huge box full of cassette tapes, because Al Fayed used to record all the telephones in Harrods,” Mr Ulleri said.
“There were like 100, 200 of these 90-minute tapes.
“There was a mine of stuff there. What was interesting about it was they recorded the trade union office within Harrods.
“They had, at the time, the biggest number of cases of people suing them because they got sacked for no reason, industrial tribunal cases.”
The documentary reported 57 cases against Harrods had been taken to industrial tribunals by Harrods in the previous three years, compared to 15 at Selfridges, nine at Debenhams and eight Harvey Nichols.
Former employees were paid tens of thousands of pounds on condition they didn’t talk about what happened to them.
Mr Loftus, a former major in the military police who joined Harrods in 1987 to become head of security, told the ITV investigation staff were “terrified” of Fayed and claimed that he was ordered to monitor calls from secretaries to the tycoon, who he said authorised all the bugging and wanted to hear details of sexually explicit conversations.
Workers were virtually dismissed on the spot, he said, with one employee subjected to racist abuse by the billionaire owner as she removed rubbish from waste bins on the fashion floor.
Ms Byrne told i she first came across allegations of racism against Fayed when she was in the beauty department at Harrods.
“A beautician came in and said,’ I’m so sorry that I’m late. The manager of the concessions is crying, and it’s awful because she employed two black beauticians and Al Fayed said they can’t come and work here’ – and this is the phrase he used -’ There are already too many monkeys working in this store’,” she said.
‘He got away’: Fayed and Vanity Fair
Al Fayed had already sued Vanity Fair and the magazine’s reporter Maureen Orth over a 1995 article that alleged racism, staff surveillance and sexual misconduct by Fayed.
The libel was robustly defended by Vanity Fair whose UK editor Henry Porter assembled evidence that Fayed was a sexual predator, with one member of staff testifying she had been offered money by the Harrods owner to sleep with the Egyptian tycoon.
Fayed later agreed to drop the case as long as the evidence Vanity Fair had gathered in preparation for a trial was locked away.
Mr Porter said he felt disappointed that the magazine didn’t write a second article about Fayed after the death of his son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales, in August, 1997.
“I argued really strongly that it was in our commercial interests as a publication to continue with this,” he told i.
“After all, we had the most amazing story. We’d seen him off and after a bit of a decent interval, we could have easily gone back into print and nailed him.
“But he got away.”
Another programme by the same film makers three years earlier, A White Christmas At Harrods, revealed that the business was facing 17 cases at industrial tribunal, including claims of racial and sexual discrimination.
The documentary makers went undercover to reveal alleged racial discrimination in hiring practices at the time, Ms Byrne said.
“We interviewed somebody who worked for Fayed who said that she had to hide under a desk one evening because she was so afraid of him,” she added.
“Women are often very nervous about speaking, but these women were terrified because he seemed to them at the heart of power in our country.”
Mr Ulleri recalled “a flurry” of letters from Al Fayed’s lawyers and how Ms Byrne battled legal threats to get the story out.
“We fully expected to be sued. She said, ‘Well, you know what? Bring it on. Let’s get him in court. Because, if he’s threatened people, let’s go to court, because he’s got to defend himself’.
“I remember thinking, bloody hell that’s great, Dorothy, that’s exactly what you want to hear.”
Ms Byrne said she was “very pleased” that last week’s documentary film has been made by the BBC.
She said: “He was a terrible, terrifying person. Victims were so afraid and intimidated.”
