Fayed's mid-air sex assaults: Gulfstream crew among 150 women abused

Mohamed Al Fayed sexually assaulted flight attendants on board his private jet, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

Three women who worked on his £35 million Gulfstream IV have contacted lawyers saying they were molested mid-air by the former Harrods tycoon.

Other crew members are said to be on the verge of coming forward.

Some of the accounts have been corroborated by Harrods staff who travelled with Fayed, mainly on trips to France. Some of the witnesses had themselves suffered abuse at Fayed’s hands.

A source said: ‘Every assault perpetrated by this man was wicked, but there is something uniquely horrendous about being subjected to his predatory advances while thousands of feet in the air and with no prospect of escape.’

Barristers acting for 37 women who allege they were assaulted by Fayed – condemned as a ‘monster’ – last week said he was at the centre of a vast web of abuse and targeted ‘victims wherever he went’.

In other developments yesterday:

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• A TV producer who traced Fayed’s victims for the BBC documentary, Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods, says he fears the youngest might have been a girl of 11;

• It emerged extra precautions were put in place at Fulham Football Club to protect female players from the disgraced tycoon;

• More than 150 new victims have come forward since the documentary was aired last week;

• Fayed’s children dismissed the allegations, with one telling friends the BBC was trying to divert attention from its own scandals.

Lawyers said Fayed used the techniques of Jimmy Savile, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein to rape and abuse his young assistants and spoke of a ‘systematic failure of corporate responsibility’ at Harrods.

Some of Fayed’s former assistants have recounted how the billionaire, who died last year aged 94, used his properties and the superyacht where Princess Diana spent a final holiday with her sons to carry out brutal sex attacks.

TV producer Keaton Stone, who spent six years investigating Fayed, said he believed one of the tycoon’s victims ‘was 11 or 12’.

He said: ‘She was the daughter of a former Harrods staff member who stayed in his Park Lane apartment. Al Fayed delegated childcare duties to one of his victims he had raped multiple times.

‘That survivor told me that the child came into her room one

night and told her that she didn’t want to sleep in her own room any more as she didn’t like Al Fayed getting into her bed.

‘I can’t get that out of my head. I want to be able to find her, wherever she is now.’

Fayed ordered young female staff to accompany him to France, often joined by celebrity guests.

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Three former assistants gave graphic descriptions of abuse on the yacht, at his Paris mansion and the apartment of his son, Dodi, who died alongside Diana.

Nine women claim they were sexually assaulted in France, including one who said she was raped. Fayed is also alleged to have attacked women at the Ritz hotel in Paris, and his villa in Saint-Tropez. Normally he travelled to France on his private jet, which was owned and operated by his former airline Fayair.

In 1999 a flight attendant threatened to take Fayed to an employment tribunal, alleging that he repeatedly sexually harassed her. The woman, then aged 27, claimed that in the fortnight she worked for Fayair, she was summoned three times to Fayed’s office in Park Lane from the airline’s headquarters at Stansted.

Each time he made unwanted sexual advances ‘of a both a physical and verbal nature’. It is thought her case was settled.

Her lawyer said at the time: ‘She believes that a woman has a right to be treated with respect in the workplace – a respect she was denied and she is taking this action to stand up for that.’

Another Fayair cabin crew member won a ‘substantial’ out-of-court settlement after claiming she had been sexually harassed then unfairly sacked by Fayed.

Bruce Drummond, a barrister representing some of the women in their compensation claims against Harrods, told Radio 4: ‘This is the worst case of corporate sexual exploitation of young women that I have ever seen, and I think probably the world has ever seen.’

Harrods said it had settled ‘a number of claims [from women] who alleged historic sexual misconduct by Al Fayed’ over the past 18 months.

It said: ‘We are utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed. These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms.

‘We acknowledge that during this time as a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise.

‘The Harrods of today is a very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed.’