“It looked like the dream job,” said Jen, who was 16 when she joined the London department store, considered the height of glamour.

But the prestige came at a price. Lawyers said on Friday that more than 400 women and witnesses linked to Harrods, Fulham football club, the Ritz hotel in Paris and other Fayed entities have come forward in the past six weeks to allege he raped or assaulted them.

Jen worked at the London store from 1986, a year after the billionaire bought it, until 1991.

Cheska Hill-Wood was 19 in 1994 when she started working for the former tycoon, who died last year aged 94.

Fayed was there from the time they interviewed, they explained.

Cheska, who was an art student, believes Fayed’s team saw her photo in a magazine before being contacted by Harrods.

“I think my face suited his requirements. I was young and very naive,” she said.

After being hired, a Harrods doctor gave Jen and Cheska gynecological examinations.

“The doctor didn’t say I was checked to make sure I was clean,” said Jen, now 54.

“And when I asked him what that meant, he said he had to know I was a virgin.”

‘Terrified’

Fayed asked to never have a boyfriend.

“We weren’t allowed to have sex with anyone,” she explained.

During her five years at Harrods, Jen said she suffered “several sexual assaults” and attempted rape in Fayed’s office and at his London residence on Park Lane.

Harrods said it had been contacted by more than 250 people wanting to negotiate an out-of-court settlement. London police say they have been contacted by 60 people, with allegations stretching back to 1979.

Jen said she was “ashamed” and “too terrified” to tell her colleagues or family about the attacks at the time.

Like many other accusers, she spoke of wiretapped phones and office cameras.

When she had a secret romantic relationship, Fayed called her and gave her a list of places the couple had been seen together, confirming her fears of being followed.

“It made me realize it wasn’t paranoia, it was actually happening.”

“I was hoping I was the only one,” Jen said, adding that she was “appalled” by the number of people who came forward to accuse Fayed.

The catalyst was the airing of the BBC documentary “Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods” in September.

After the broadcast, Harrods, which was taken over by Qatari interests in 2010, “condemned” the behavior of its former owner and apologized for abandoning “victims”.

Jen, who asked that her name not be used, waited until the day after the documentary aired to tell her husband and parents about her experience at Harrods.

“Absolute Monster”

Cheska Hill-Wood immediately told her mother about her attack.

She was an aspiring actress and Fayed had offered to introduce her to his son Dodi, a producer.

Fayed took her to his room one evening after work and auditioned her for a Peter Pan movie.

She was made to wear a bathing suit for the camera and recite the script’s lines “take me, take me, please”.

The then-60-year-old grabbed her and forcefully kissed her, Cheska said.

She managed to escape and never set foot in the office or Harrods again.

Both women spoke to the media shortly after. Jen told her story in Vanity Fair magazine in the 1990s on the condition of anonymity, but a Harrods security official contacted her to threaten her and her family.

Fayed sued the magazine for defamation and a settlement was reached “out of respect for a bereaved father” after his son Dodi died alongside Princess Diana in a 1997 car crash in Paris.

Cheska spoke in the 1990s for a documentary that was never broadcast.

She spoke again in 2017, bare-faced, to UK television station Channel Four.

“But nothing happened after that. The police did not follow her” Fayed, she said, adding that the ordeal had left her desperate.

Both spoke of their “fury” after his death last year.

“This absolute monster has gone down without being prosecuted. The anger is huge,” said Cheska, now 50.

She now hopes that “a lot of people who do their dirty work,” such as setting up medical appointments and recruiting women, will face justice.

© 2024 AFP