A former Harrods employee has accused Mohamed Al Fayed’s only surviving brother of sexually assaulting her at the businessman’s Highland estate.
The woman, who has asked only to be known as Frances, has shared sickening details of an alleged attack at the hands of Ali Fayed at Mohamed’s sprawling Balnagown Estate in Easter Ross, in the farmhouse he occupied on the estate.
Frances, who says she felt unable to speak out at the time, says Ali assaulted her in the 90s when he and his brothers, Mohamed and Salah, owned and ran Harrods.
The revelations were reported by the BBC as three former Harrods employees, including Frances, accused the now 82-year-old of sexually assaulting them while they were working for the department store.
Speaking publicly for the first time, the three women say prior to Ali’s alleged assaults, they had also been sexually abused by his older brother.
Frances, who waived her right to anonymity in the interview with the BBC, said: “This is my chance to finally stand up for myself. I’m not going to be that scared 24-year-old who doesn’t know what to do.”
Frances explained that she took a job working for Harrods in the store’s interior design studio in 1989. She says that it wasn’t long before Mohamed Al Fayed began to bully and sexually abuse her. Frances says she recalls him regularly trying to grab her breasts and grope her while at work, or subjecting her to “foul” verbal tirades.
Despite not having much experience, Frances says she was tasked with renovating Mohamed’s Balnagown Estate, including a farmhouse belonging to his younger brother, Ali. Frances describes Ali Fayed’s demeanour as calmer than that of Mohamed. “I think for a moment I thought maybe he would be kinder to me,” she said. “But he wasn’t.”
Ali Fayed, like Mohamed, also had a private office and private apartment in 60 Park Lane in central London and it is there where Frances says his sexual abuse started with him “trying to kiss” her, followed by him “groping” and “molesting” her.
She says both the Fayed brothers would regularly give her gifts and the abuse escalated in 1992 when she flew to Connecticut to discuss interior design plans with Ali Fayed’s wife.
During the trip Frances says Ali Fayed got her on the bed and tried to get on top of her. His hands were “inside my bra, inside my pants. I knew what his intention was”.
According to Frances the alleged attack stopped when one of Ali’s children called out for him. Afterwards, she says she sat on the bed, “frozen”.
Frances says Ali Fayed reportedly sexually assaulted her again later that year on a trip to Balnagown, where she was adding the finishing interior touches to his farmhouse.
Ali called her into his private office, she says, then dragged her onto his lap and started kissing her neck and touching her breasts as he spun around in his chair.
She says she could feel he was aroused through his trousers. “I remember him laughing,” said Frances, who says she eventually managed to break free and run out of the room. “Laughter is meant to be nice. It wasn’t. I left him there just laughing at me.”
She says that Ali Fayed would often try to sexually touch her when they met, adding that he was “always laughing and joking and making out it was fun”.
The following year, Frances says she was fired for being in a relationship with another employee, something she says Mohamed Al Fayed forbade among staff. Harrods later settled a case she brought for unfair dismissal.
Frances describes her time after leaving Harrods as “going underground and shutting myself down”. She struggled to work and trust people and eventually moved away. She says Mohamed and Ali Fayed “took away” her confidence and dignity.
She added: “To this day I suffer with terrible anxiety and panic attacks and I don’t like people in my space.”
Police say 111 women have now made allegations against Mohamed Al Fayed, who added the Arabic “Al” prefix to his surname sometime in the 1970s.
A spokesperson for Ali, who lives in the US, said he “will not be scapegoated” and he “unequivocally denies any and all the allegations of wrongdoing” and that “the incidents simply never took place”.
Mohamed Al Fayed and his younger brothers bought Harrods in 1985. While Mohamed was the chairman, running day-to-day operations of the luxury department store, Ali Fayed was a director and also helped oversee the House of Fraser group, which they owned in the early 1990s.
In October the Sunday Mail told how Mohamed reportedly tried to rape another former Harrods employee at the Balnagown estate. Sophia Stone was attacked by the tycoon on a visit to the castle more than 30 years ago.
In 2021, she reported her attack to Police Scotland but the force said there was no corroboration – despite 20 other women also reporting they’d been assaulted to the Met police at the same time. Sophia and her husband Keaton told our sister title that they are convinced Al Fayed attacked others at the “castle of horrors” and urged any other women to come forward.
Harrods told the BBC in a statement that the new claims point to the “breadth of abuse” by Mohamed Al Fayed and “raise serious allegations” against his brother Ali.
“We could not possibly speak on behalf of any individual who can, and should, respond to these allegations directly,” it added.
The store, which came under new ownership in 2010, said it hoped survivors were looking at “every appropriate avenue to them in their pursuit of justice, whether that be Harrods, the police or the Fayed family and estate”.
Mohamed Al Fayed never faced charges while he was alive, but the women believe his brother Ali should now be investigated by police.
Ali Fayed, who was granted British citizenship in 1999, co-owns luxury British shirtmaker Turnbull and Asser with his sons – but resigned as director on 8 December 2024, 10 days after these allegations were put to him by the BBC.
All three women who spoke to the BBC are pursuing civil legal action against Harrods through Justice for Harrods Survivors.
Their barrister Maria Mulla said: “We applaud the bravery of the women who have spoken out on their allegations against Ali Fayed and reiterate our commitment to securing justice and accountability for all survivors. We repeat, no stone will be left unturned in pursuit of this aim.”
The BBC spoke to three other women who said they had been either raped, sexually assaulted or trafficked by the other Fayed brother, Salah, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2010.
The women who accuse Ali Fayed question what the three brothers knew about each other’s behaviour.
Ali Fayed’s spokesperson says he “unequivocally denies any and all allegations of wrongdoing.” They added: “The alleged incidents simply never occurred. Mr Fayed is not a perpetrator and will not be scapegoated. He will robustly defend himself against these unsubstantiated claims and will not allow false accusations to go unchallenged.”
Police Scotland have been asked by the Record for comment.