Former employees of the late Mohamed Al Fayed, who was boss of Harrods, accuse him of rape in a new documentary

Five women have accused Mohamed Al Fayed, who used to own Harrods and no longer does, of rape, and over 20 have accused him of sexual abuse.

Mohamed Al Fayed used to own the high-end department store Harrods. Five women have accused him of rape, and over 20 former workers say he sexually assaulted them while he was in charge of the store.

A new BBC documentary and podcast called Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods goes into more depth about the disturbing claims.

Testimonies in the video show that Harrods not only did nothing to stop the abuse, they even tried to hide it. The women talk about things that they say happened in different places, like London, Paris, St. Tropez, and Abu Dhabi.

“I made it clear that I didn’t want that to happen,” one of the women who says Al Fayed raped her at his Park Lane flat said. I didn’t agree to it. It was too much for me, for sure.

Another woman, who says she was a teenager at the time, talked about being raped at Al Fayed’s home in Mayfair. She called him “a monster, a sexual predator with no moral compass.”

A group of lawyers for some of the women, led by attorney Bruce Drummond, have spoken out against Al Fayed’s culture of fear and abuse. “It was unbelievable and very dark,” Drummond said of what he saw as “a spider’s web of corruption and abuse.”

The present owners of Harrods were shocked by the news. They said they were “utterly appalled” by the accusations and apologized to the victims. Their message said that they knew they had let down the victims.

There have been claims of sexual abuse against Fayed in the past, but the new claims are the biggest and most serious ever. The BBC thinks that many more women may have been abused, and more information is still coming out about how bad the abuse was.

The accusations have started a talk about the legacies of powerful men and the systems that let abuse happen without being stopped.