To those who wonder why Mohamed Fayed had been able for so long to escape the just consequences of his actions — the rape and sexual assaults of a bewildering number of young female employees — a single word suffices: fear.
As one of his victims says in the BBC documentary Al Fayed, Predator At Harrods: ‘We were all so scared. He actively cultivated a culture of fear.’
Emma Barnett, who interviewed one of the Harrods owner’s victims, explained that, latterly, what had hurt them most was ‘Netflix’s The Crown’s recent rosy depiction of Fayed as this colourful, avuncular character… who was kind to everyone, from Princess Diana to any child he met in his perfect store’.
As one of his victims says in the BBC documentary Al Fayed, Predator At Harrods: ‘We were all so scared. He actively cultivated a culture of fear’
In 1997, Fayed tried to get my wife Rosa Monckton sacked from her job as managing director of the jewellers Tiffany & Co in London, when Rosa – after Diana’s death – declared that her friend had had no intention of marrying Dodi. Rosa is pictured here with the late princess at the Tiffany & Co summer party at the Mayfair Store in July 1993
Although that was the work of The Crown’s screenwriter, Peter Morgan, who defends his version on the grounds of artistic licence, this travesty 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 scary Fayed could be. Rosa had gone on holiday with Diana (who was godmother to our daughter Domenica) on a little boat around the Greek coastline, less than a fortnight before the late Princess’s violent death in Paris.
So when Fayed began, in October 2003 — fully six years later — to propagate the grotesque conspiracy theory that Diana had told him she was pregnant by his son Dodi, that Buckingham Palace knew this and had her murdered to prevent ‘a Muslim Royal child’, Rosa felt obliged to make public that her friend had had her period while they were on the boat, and so could not have been pregnant at the time of her death. This fact was later confirmed by blood tests for the long-delayed inquest in 2007.
Emma Barnett , who interviewed one of the Harrods owner’s victims, explained that, latterly, what had hurt them most was ‘ Netflix ‘s The Crown’s recent rosy depiction of Fayed (pictured) as this colourful, avuncular character… who was kind to everyone, from Princess Diana to any child he met in his perfect store’
The Crown’s screenwriter Peter Morgan defends his version on the grounds of artistic licence, – but this travesty of the truth owes much to the efforts of Fayed’s oleaginous PR man, Michael Cole, a former BBC Royal Correspondent, pictured
Soon afterwards, Rosa called me (I was away) to say that a chauffeur-driven car had just arrived at night at our isolated home in the countryside – it is not even on a road but down a long, unmarked track – to deliver a menacing letter, from Fayed, accusing her of being involved in the ‘plot to murder Diana’.
In fact, Fayed had, in 1997, tried to get my wife sacked from her job as managing director of the jewellers Tiffany & Co in London, when Rosa – after Diana’s death – declared that her friend had had no intention of marrying Dodi.
At that time, Tiffany’s head office in New York wanted to open a branch in Harrods, and Fayed rang the chief executive, Bill Chaney, to demand that he fire Rosa if he wanted the concession.
Rosa’s American boss rang her to ask what the hell was going on. She explained the reason for Fayed’s demand (which left him all the more bemused). She kept her job, and Tiffany’s never opened in Harrods. Which was good news for its female sales staff.
Rosa was all right – and not just because, in her case, Fayed’s onslaught did not involve physical harassment. The point is that, unlike those young women who endured his disgusting depredations, my wife was not in his power or his pay. His victims all were, and their fear was partly based on what he could do to them if they complained.
In fact, Vanity Fair magazine in 1995 published an investigation into Fayed, which included allegations of his sexual molestation of (unnamed) employees.
In the wake of the BBC documentary, Henry Porter, who had been the UK editor of Vanity Fair, wrote an article for the Observer in which he explained how the owners of the magazine, who had been accumulating more devastating evidence after Fayed had sued for libel, agreed a sort of no-fault settlement with the Harrods owner after Diana and Dodi’s death, ‘out of respect for the grieving father’.
Before that, we lived opposite Henry (in the same London street), and when on June 1, 1997, at Domenica’s 2nd birthday party, Diana told us that she was intending to accept an invitation from Fayed to spend a few days with him and his family off the South of France on his 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 did not know then was that Fayed – a man long obsessed with gaining connections with the British Royal Family – had already conceived the holiday as an opportunity to introduce Diana to his son Dodi, and actually to make them a couple, with marriage the intended apotheosis of his stunningly audacious scheme.’
I regret now that I did not include the allegations of his sexual depravity in the argument I put to Diana, that evening, as to why she should not accept Fayed’s invitation.
The Queen had been happy for well over a decade to allow Fayed to sponsor the Royal Windsor Horse Show – as seen here together in 1997
Instead, I concentrated on what was known for a certain fact: that he had been denied a UK passport because of a damning Department of Trade Report, following his acquisition of Harrods from the House of Fraser in 1987.
The 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 fraudster’ and observed: ‘Fayed is at once capable of believing he is the victim of grand conspiracies and yet inventing fantastic false stories of conspiracy on the part of others.’
This, as Fayed’s behaviour after Diana’s death demonstrated, was both precise and prophetic.
Anyway, Diana thanked me for explaining all this … but took no notice. She had earlier pointed out to Rosa that, having relinquished her Royal protection officers along with her title, she felt Fayed’s big security operation would protect her. How tragically false that turned out to be.
I suspect she also felt that if the Queen had been happy for well over a decade to allow Fayed to sponsor the Royal Windsor Horse Show, so that for year after year the Monarch sat next to the Harrods owner, and was photographed doing so (to the Egyptian’s delight), what was so unwise about her getting a free holiday from the same man?
This also shows how preposterous was Fayed’s perpetual claim that he had been ‘shunned by the establishment’. On the contrary, he was not shunned enough by Buckingham Palace, which continued until 2000 to bestow entirely discretionary royal warrants on Harrods, which he proudly displayed on the outside of his emporium.
That fact – of ostensible Royal support for Harrods – would only have added to his victims’ fear of how Fayed’s status would count against them if they took him on.
So he died last year, at 94, having never faced justice. The man who spent hundreds of hours interviewing Fayed for an abandoned ghost-written autobiography, Mark Hollingsworth, recalled that Fayed would say: ‘I believe we go to another life and world, and you live with what you have done in life.’
If anything like that is true, his victims can at least console themselves that the dark soul of Mohamed Fayed is in eternal torment.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk