It was Could 1991 and Mohamed Al Fayed was in a foul temper: “I instructed you, no intercourse with anyone else, no relationship with anyone else.”
The goal of the then 62-year-old billionaire’s ire was Jen, 20, who had labored in his private workplace at Harrods for the reason that age of 16.
“I stated: ‘What do you imply?’ He proceeded to checklist an entire bunch of occasions, locations, dates, the place I’d been seen with my boyfriend from the meals corridor, and these weren’t essentially throughout the week. They have been at weekends. They weren’t essentially in London. They have been in Surrey.
“The dates have been very, very particular, the places and all the things was 100% correct. Mohamed stated to me: ‘You do know that John Macnamara [Fayed’s head of security] labored for the Met police. He was very senior within the Met police.’”
Over her 4 and a half years at Harrods, having joined the luxurious retailer in Knightsbridge as a administration trainee in 1986, Jen claims to have been repeatedly groped and sexually assaulted – and at one level strangled – by Fayed.
It began with him “teasing” her with a dildo he saved on his desk and constructed as much as an alleged tried rape in Fayed’s Park Lane condominium, she stated.
She had not spoken a phrase of it to her household till every week in the past. Fayed was a monster, she stated, nevertheless it was not the Egyptian businessman’s demise final yr at 94 that persuaded her it was protected to speak to legal professionals getting ready a declare in opposition to Harrods.
The clincher, she stated, was studying that John Macnamara was useless. “It’s simply figuring out that that particular person’s not round, that that particular person can’t damage you any extra,” she stated. “He knew what Mohamed was doing to us, and was mopping up a few of that stuff to ensure it didn’t get any additional.”
Macnamara, a former deputy head of Scotland Yard’s fraud squad with particular accountability for the general public sector corruption unit, was Fayed’s right-hand man; at all times at his shoulder, a keeper of secrets and techniques and constant to his boss proper up till his personal demise aged 83 in 2019.
He had been taken on by Fayed in 1987 as director of safety for Home of Fraser (Shops) Ltd after retiring at 51 from the Met with the rank of detective chief superintendent.
He was promoted in 1994 to supervise all of Fayed’s safety wants, deploying his data of covert surveillance and a myriad of different darkish arts to focus on his boss’s enemies, as chronicled in court docket paperwork and his personal admissions to parliamentary hearings associated to claims that Fayed had made money funds to the MP Neil Hamilton in return for putting parliamentary questions.
It was Macnamara whom Fayed put accountable for making an attempt to show the veracity of conspiracy theories concerning the demise of Diana, Princess of Wales, and his son Dodi Fayed. Macnamara admitted on the official coroner’s inquiry to mendacity about how a lot alcohol had been drunk by the chauffeur Henri Paul on the night time of their deaths in August 1997.
When Hermina da Silva, a Portuguese nanny to Mohamed Al Fayed’s youngsters, stated she wouldn’t preserve silent over being sacked for rebuffing her employer’s aggressive advances, it was Macnamara who assured his underlings she would quickly be arrested.
And he or she was, for stealing property from Fayed’s brother’s condominium on Park Lane. She was later launched with out cost and went on to be awarded £12,000 compensation.
It was Macnamara who was tasked with closing down a potential article about Fayed in Vainness Truthful in 1995, after which pursuing the journalists and sources behind it. And a number of girls say it was Macnamara who sought to interrupt their will to talk out.
The creator and journalist Tom Bower knew Macnamara effectively. Fayed was a key supply for Bower’s e-book on the Harrods proprietor’s former enterprise companion and rival, Tiny Rowland. Macnamara, a eager digger of grime, was the conduit.
“The rationale he appointed Macnamara [at Harrods] is as a result of Tiny Roland had appointed Macnamara’s predecessor on the fraud squad,” Bower instructed the Guardian. “He copied Rowland – and the rationale they selected the fraud workforce was as a result of they’re each fraudsters, they usually wanted their experience.”
Macnamara, regardless of having retired from the Met years earlier, appeared to have retained shut relationships with officers. “I as soon as went with him to Chelsea police station, and he was form of handing out all these hampers and bottles of champagne. It was wonderful,” Bower stated.
Fayed had noticed Jen inside weeks of her becoming a member of the shop, whereas she was on secondment to the fifth ground “administration suite”. “Over these 4 and a half years, I used to be subjected to initially sexual harassment and psychological abuse, after which sexual assaults after which tried rape,” she stated.
She has little doubt that Macnamara knew all the things. “He was very chilly and fairly direct,” she stated. “There had been occasions when he’d seen me in tears or popping out of Mohamed’s workplace in a state.”
Fayed supplied Jen with a flat on Park Lane. All the workers believed their telephones have been being tapped, and the common alternative of the movie within the cameras within the places of work by Macnamara’s individuals allow them to know that nothing was going unnoticed within the constructing.
Jen found Fayed was additionally watching her within the condominium when he known as her after she had simply obtained out of the bathtub. “I had an issue with my again, so I used to be laid on my mattress with my legs up in opposition to the wall, and I used to be bare. The cellphone was by my mattress, and I picked up the cellphone, and he simply stated: ‘Why are you mendacity like that?’ It simply turned me chilly.”
She quietly began to search for a brand new job however at some point when coming into work she was instructed to go to the workplace of one in every of Fayed’s aides, the place she additionally discovered Macnamara ready for her. “They stated: ‘We perceive that you simply’ve been disloyal and we all know that you simply’re searching for one other job. No one chooses to go away Mohamed’s employment; he chooses whenever you depart.
“‘So what we’re going to do now could be you’re going to write down a letter of resignation, and we’re going to inform you what to write down, and also you’re going to write down it, and also you’re going at present, and that’s it.’ So that they stood over me, the 2 of them, and John instructed me what to write down.”
She was escorted off the store ground by safety guards and thrown on to the pavement “like a felony”, she stated.
Jen stated her subsequent expertise of Fayed got here after she had reluctantly agreed to talk anonymously to the journalist Maureen Orth, who was writing an exposé in Vainness Truthful.
“I used to be working in a lodge, and I had a cellphone name from John Macnamara utterly out of the blue. He stated: ‘I do know that you simply’re speaking to Maureen Orth. So that is only a cellphone name to remind you what you have been instructed whenever you left Harrods, that you’re not to discuss Mohamed Al Fayed.
“‘And when you do resolve to try this, then I want to remind you that I do know the place your dad and mom reside and I do know the place you reside. And wouldn’t or not it’s a disgrace if one thing occurred to both them otherwise you.’ And he hung up.”
Final week a BBC documentary revealed allegations that 5 girls have been raped by Fayed, with a number of others alleging sexual misconduct.
On Thursday, the Met known as on survivors who had not but come ahead to take action. A spokesperson stated: “We should guarantee we absolutely discover whether or not some other people may very well be pursued for any felony offences.”
Attorneys are persevering with to construct a case in opposition to Harrods for its alleged failure to guard Fayed’s staff. The managing director of Harrods, Michael Ward, who was appointed by Fayed in 2006, has publicly apologised, saying the billionaire had presided over a “poisonous tradition of secrecy, intimidation, concern of repercussion and sexual misconduct”.
Jen stated there have been others who have been but to face justice – and in addition different girls who had but to begin to course of their trauma. “This time final week, my household didn’t know something,” she stated.
“It’s simply the final week that’s given me an enormous quantity of braveness to speak to my dad and mom, my brother, my husband. I really feel now it’s about doing what we are able to to be sure that if there are different individuals on the market which might be nonetheless struggling, that we are able to get them to come back ahead and have some assist.”
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