It seemed like a dream job: selling fashionable handbags at London’s Harrods department store and living away from her family in Peterborough, Ont., for the first time. But the job quickly turned into a nightmare and within a couple of months Amy says she became another victim of sexual assault at the hands of Harrods’ owner Mohamed Al-Fayed.
She’s now part of a group of 37 accusers of Mr. Al-Fayed, which includes two other Canadians, who have banded together to seek accountability from the company. And the number keeps growing.
Lawyers representing the women said that since a BBC documentary aired this week outlining details of systematic abuse by Mr. Al-Fayed, who died last year, they’ve received more than 100 phone calls from women around the world who worked at Harrods. They’re continuing to investigate the allegations and considering legal action in Britain and other jurisdictions.
“We do not see this as anything but a global claim by all those ladies,” said Bruce Drummond, a London-based lawyer who is part of the legal team which also includes high-profile women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred from Los Angeles.
The Globe and Mail does not identify victims of sexual assault unless they have voluntarily identified themselves. Amy asked that only her first name be used.
Now 52, Amy can still remember the excitement she felt when she got the job at Harrods in the summer of 1993. She was 21 and had just graduated from Trent University with a degree in sociology. She applied for the summer work abroad program and planned to spend a couple of years in London.
Mr. Al-Fayed was a larger-than-life character at the time, a billionaire businessman who hobnobbed with royalty and whose son, Dodi, would later have a romantic relationship with Diana, Princess of Wales.
“It was something beyond my own imagination,” Amy recalled. “I could have never even conceived of such an amazing building in itself, but also it was just full of luxury and wonders and beauty.”
After two months selling handbags, she was offered a job as an assistant in Mr. Al-Fayed’s office on Park Lane. Before taking the position, the company sent her for a sexual health examination and forwarded the results to Mr. Al-Fayed. Amy said she was naive and didn’t question the test at the time. “I just thought that this was part of a screening process,” she said.
Almost from the day she started on Park Lane, Amy was isolated from other staff and Mr. Al-Fayed found excuses to call her into his office. “That’s where the fondling, the grabbing, the groping, the kissing happened, every time.”
She took three work trips with Mr. Al-Fayed. She was never told where they were going or for how long. And she always had to give him her passport.
On one trip to Paris, where he owned the Ritz Hotel, Amy stayed alone with Mr. Al-Fayed at his mansion, Villa Windsor, the former home of Edward VIII and the Duchess of Windsor. Just after she went to bed, she saw the doorknob turning. “That’s when I thought, ‘here we go.’ ”
Mr. Al-Fayed came in naked with only a towel wrapped around his waist. “He proceeded to get into this bed and on top of me,” she said. “Something came to me and I just said, ‘If my mother only knew.’ And that stopped him. He just stopped in his tracks, got up and left the room.”
Amy felt stunned and petrified. The next morning at breakfast, Mr. Al-Fayed behaved as if nothing had happened.
She finally quit in 1996 and took up a career in teaching. She rarely spoke about what happened at Harrods and tried to move on with her life. But she still feels uncomfortable when someone touches her head the way Mr. Al-Fayed did, and she panics if she can’t see a way out of a room.
Last May, the husband of another victim tracked Amy down on social media. He was working on the 90-minute BBC documentary, called Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods, which told the stories of several women who were repeatedly assaulted during their time at Harrods and alleged company officials covered up the attacks.
He told Amy about the other victims and the legal action. She couldn’t sleep for three days as the memories came flooding back. But then she felt overwhelming relief.
“Finally, finally, finally, someone’s calling and saying to me, ‘That’s what that was, Amy, That’s what happened. That was assault.’ ”
She met other accusers for the first time on Friday at a press conference in London. They shared similar stories and Amy finally felt she wasn’t alone. “We’re figuring it out together,” she said.
Mr. Al-Fayed sold Harrods in 2010 to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund for £1.5 billion, or $2.7-billion. In a statement this week the owners said they were appalled by the allegations and vowed to settle claims against the company “in the quickest way possible.” But they also insisted that they only learned about the scope of the abuse last year.
That hasn’t sat well with the women or their lawyers. They allege Mr. Al-Fayed’s conduct was widely known inside Harrods for 25 years and that many staff enabled him. “Mohamed Al-Fayed was a monster. But he was a monster enabled by a system,” said Dean Armstrong, one of the lawyers. “It is time that they took responsibility. It is time that they set matters right.”
Amy isn’t sure where the legal action will lead. On Friday she was just grateful to be with so many other women who worked at Harrods all those years ago.