For those who wonder why Mohamed Fayed had been able to escape for so long the just consequences of his actions – the rape and sexual assault of a bewildering number of young female employees – one word is enough: fear.
As one of his victims says in the BBC documentary Al Fayed, Predator At Harrods: ‘We were all very scared. “He actively cultivated a culture of fear.”
Emma Barnett, who interviewed one of the Harrods owner’s victims, explained that what had hurt them most lately was “Netflix’s The Crown’s recent upbeat depiction of Fayed as this colorful, fatherly character… who was kind to everyone, from Princess Diana to everyone.” boy he met in his perfect store’.
As one of his victims says in the BBC documentary Al Fayed, Predator At Harrods: ‘We were all very scared. He actively cultivated a culture of fear.
My wife Rosa Monckton was a friend of Princess Diana. In 1997, Fayed tried to have my wife fired from her job as managing director of jeweler Tiffany & Co in London, when Rosa – after Diana’s death – declared that her friend had not intended to marry Dodi. Rosa appears here with the late princess at the Tiffany & Co summer party at the Mayfair store in July 1993.
Although the work of The Crown screenwriter Peter Morgan, who defends his version on the basis of artistic license, this parody of the truth owes much to the efforts of Fayed’s oleaginous PR man, Michael Cole, a former BBC royal correspondent. , who definitely earned the millions Fayed paid him over many years (as a full member of the Harrods board).
My wife, Rosa Monckton, has personal experience of how terrifying Fayed can be. Rosa had gone on vacation with Diana (who was godmother to our daughter Domenica) on a small boat along the Greek coast, less than a fortnight before the violent death of the late princess in Paris.
So when Fayed began, in October 2003 (six years later), to propagate the grotesque conspiracy theory that Diana had told him she was pregnant with his son Dodi, that Buckingham Palace knew this and murdered her to prevent that ‘a real Muslim boy’ Rosa felt compelled to make public that her friend had had her period while they were on the ship, so she could not have been pregnant at the time of her death. This fact was later confirmed by blood tests for the long-delayed 2007 investigation.
Emma Barnett, who interviewed one of the Harrods owner’s victims, explained that what had hurt them most lately was the recent upbeat depiction of Fayed (pictured) on Netflix’s The Crown as this colorful character. and fatherly… who was kind to everyone. from Princess Diana to any child she met in her perfect store’
The Crown screenwriter Peter Morgan defends his version on the basis of artistic license, but this parody of the truth owes much to the efforts of Fayed’s oleaginous PR man, Michael Cole, a former BBC royal correspondent, in the photo.
Shortly after, Rosa called me (she was out) to tell me that a car with a driver had just arrived at night at our isolated house in the countryside – it is not even on a road but along a long unmarked road – to deliver me a threatening letter. of Fayed, accusing her of being involved in the “plot to assassinate Diana.”
In fact, Fayed had tried to have my wife fired from her job as managing director of the Tiffany & Co jeweler in London in 1997, when Rosa – after Diana’s death – declared that her friend had no intention of marrying Dodi.
At the time, Tiffany’s New York headquarters wanted to open a branch in Harrods, and Fayed called CEO Bill Chaney to demand that he fire Rosa if he wanted the concession.
Rosa’s American boss called her to ask what the hell was going on. She explained the reason for Fayed’s lawsuit (which left him even more puzzled). He kept his job and Tiffany’s never opened in Harrods. Which was good news for their female sales staff.
Rosa was fine, and not just because, in her case, Fayed’s attack did not involve physical harassment. The thing is, unlike those young women who endured his disgusting depredations, my wife was neither in his power nor in his pay. All of his victims were, and their fear was based in part on what he could do to them if they complained.
In fact, Vanity Fair magazine published an investigation into Fayed in 1995, which included accusations of sexual abuse of (unidentified) employees.
In the wake of the BBC documentary, Henry Porter, who had been editor of Vanity Fair in the United Kingdom, wrote an article for the Observer explaining how the magazine’s owners, who had been amassing more devastating evidence after Fayed filed a defamation lawsuit, agreeing a no-fault settlement of sorts with the owner of Harrods after Diana and Dodi’s deaths, “out of respect for the grieving father.”
We used to live opposite Henry (on the same street in London), and when on June 1, 1997, at Domenica’s second birthday party, Diana told us that she intended to accept an invitation from Fayed to spend a few days with him and her family in the south of France on their newly acquired yacht, Jonikal, I urged her not to accept.
As I wrote in the Mail on the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death: “What I didn’t know then was that Fayed – a man long obsessed with establishing connections with the British royal family – had already conceived of the holiday as an opportunity to introduce Diana to his son Dodi and, in effect, make them a couple, marriage being the intended apotheosis of his astonishingly audacious plan.
I now regret that I did not include the accusations of his sexual depravity in the argument I made to Diana that night about why she should not accept Fayed’s invitation.
The Queen was happy for over a decade to allow Fayed to sponsor the Royal Windsor Horse Show, as seen here together in 1997.
Instead, I focused on what was known for certain: that he had been refused a British passport due to a damning Department of Trade report following his takeover of Harrods from House Fraser in 1987.
Inspectors concluded that Fayed and his brother Ali “had dishonestly represented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources.” They also described Fayed as “a conman” and observed: “Fayed is capable of believing that he is the victim of large conspiracies and yet inventing fantastic false stories of conspiracy by others.”
This, as Fayed’s behavior after Diana’s death demonstrated, was both accurate and prophetic.
Anyway, Diana thanked me for explaining all this to me… but she didn’t listen. He had previously pointed out to Rosa that, having lost his royal protection officers along with his title, he felt that Fayed’s large security operation would protect her. How tragically false that turned out to be.
I suspect he also felt that if the Queen had been happy for over a decade to allow Fayed to sponsor the Royal Windsor Horse Show, so that year after year the Monarch would sit next to the owner of Harrods and be photographed doing so (to the delight of the Egyptian), what was so reckless about her receiving a free vacation from the same man?
This also shows how absurd Fayed’s perpetual claim that he had been “rejected by the establishment” was. By contrast, he was not sufficiently rebuffed by Buckingham Palace, which continued until 2000 to grant entirely discretionary royal warrants to Harrods, which he proudly displayed outside his emporium.
That fact – ostensible royal support for Harrods – would have only increased his victims’ fears of how Fayed’s status would work against them if they accepted him.
So he died last year, at the age of 94, without ever having been brought to justice. Mark Hollingsworth, the man who spent hundreds of hours interviewing Fayed for an abandoned ghost-written autobiography, recalled Fayed saying: “I think we go to another life and another world, and you live with what you’ve done in life.” .
If something like this is true, his victims can at least take comfort in knowing that Mohamed Fayed’s dark soul is in eternal torment.
