by It was May 1991 and Mohamed Al Fayed was in trouble: “I told you, no sex with anyone else, no relationship with anyone else.”
The target of the then 62-year-old billionaire was Jen, 20, who had worked in his personal office at Harrods since the age of 16.
“I said: ‘What do you mean?’ He went on to list many times, places, dates, where I was seen with my boyfriend, and these were not necessarily during the week. They were not necessarily at the weekend They were in London. They were in Surrey.
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“The dates were very, very specific, the locations and everything was 100% accurate. Mohamed said to me: ‘You know Seán Macnamara [Fayed’s head of security] he worked for the Met police. He was very senior in the Met police.”
Over her four-and-a-half years at Harrods, after joining the luxury store in Knightsbridge as a management trainee in 1986, Jen claims she was repeatedly groped – and at one point choked – by Fayed.
He began “teasing” her with a dildo he kept on his desk and took up with an alleged rape attempt in Fayed’s Park Lane flat, she said.
She didn’t speak a word to her family until a week ago. Fayed was a monster, she said, but it was not the Egyptian businessman’s death last year at the age of 94 that convinced her it was safe to speak to lawyers who were preparing a claim against Harrods.
The clincher, she said, was learning that John Macnamara was dead. “Just knowing that that person isn’t around, that that person can’t hurt you anymore,” she said. “He knew what Mohamed was doing to us, and he was joking about some of that stuff to make sure it didn’t happen again.”
Fayed’s right-hand man was Macnamara, a former deputy head of Scotland Yard’s fraud squad with special responsibility for the public sector corruption unit; always on his shoulder, keeper of secrets and loyal to his boss until his own death at the age of 83 in 2019.
Fayed took over in 1987 as director of security for House of Fraser (Stores) Ltd after retiring at 51 from the Met with the rank of detective chief superintendent.
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He was promoted in 1994 to oversee all of Fayed’s security needs, using his knowledge of covert surveillance and a host of other dark arts to target his boss’ enemies, as detailed in court documents and his own admissions to parliamentary hearings related to Fayed’s claims. he made cash payments to MP Neil Hamilton in exchange for asking parliamentary questions.
It was Macnamara who put Fayed in charge of trying to prove the truth of the conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her son Dodi Fayed. Macnamara admitted at the official coroner’s inquest that he had lied about the amount of alcohol drunk by driver Henri Paul on the night of his death in August 1997.
When Hermina da Silva, a Portuguese nanny to Mohamed Al Fayed’s children, said she would not be silenced while being sacked for rejecting her employer’s aggressive advances, it was Macnamara who confirmed his foundations that she would soon be arrested .
And she was, for stealing property from Fayed’s brother’s flat on Park Lane. She was later released without charge and awarded £12,000 compensation.
It was Macnamara who was tasked with shutting down a potential article about Fayed in Vanity Fair in 1995, and then hunting down the journalists and sources behind it. And many women say that it was Macnamara who tried to break their will to speak out.
Author and journalist Tom Bower knew Macnamara well. Fayed was a key source for Bower’s book on Harrods owner Tiny Rowland’s former business partner and rival. Macnamara, a keen digger of dirt, was the conduit.
“Why he appointed Macnamara [at Harrods] It’s because Tiny Roland appointed Macnamara’s predecessor at the fraud squad,” Bower told the Guardian. “He copied Rowland – and the reason they chose the fraud team was that they were both fraudsters, and they needed their expertise.”
Despite Macnamara having resigned from the Met years earlier, he appeared to have a close relationship with officers. “I went with him to Chelsea police station once, and he was sort of handing out all these hampers and bottles of champagne. It was amazing,” Bower said.
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Fayed saw Jen within weeks of entering the store, seconded to the fifth floor “management suite”. “Over those four and a half years, I was subjected first to sexual harassment and mental abuse, and then sexual assault and then attempted rape,” she said.
She has no doubt that Macnamara knew everything. “He was very cold and very direct,” she said. “There were times when he saw me in tears or coming out of Mohamed’s office in a state.”
Fayed gave Jen a flat on Park Lane. All the employees believed that their phones were being tapped, and when the Macnamara family replaced the film in the cameras in the offices regularly they were informed that nothing was going on in the building.
Jen found out that Fayed was also watching her in the apartment when he called her after she got out of the bath. “I had a problem with my back, so I was laid on my bed with my feet against the wall, and I was naked. The phone was next to my bed, and I picked up the phone, and he just said: ‘Why are you lying like that?’ It turned me cold.”
She quietly began looking for a new job but one day when she came into work she was told to go to the office of one of Fayed’s assistants, where she also found Macnamara waiting for her. “They said: ‘We understand that you have been unfaithful and we know that you are looking for another job. No one chooses to leave Mohamed’s employment; he chooses when you leave.
“‘So what we’re going to do now is you’re going to write a letter of resignation, and we’re going to tell you what to write, and you’re going to write it, and you’re going today. , and that’s it.’ So they stood over me, both of them, and John told me what to write.”
She was taken from the shop floor by security guards and thrown onto the pavement “like a criminal”, she said.
Jen said her next experience with Fayed came after she reluctantly agreed to speak anonymously with journalist Maureen Orth, who was writing an exposé in Vanity Fair.
“I was working in a hotel, and I got a phone call from John Macnamara completely out of my mind. He said: ‘I know you are talking to Maureen Orth. So this is just a phone call to remind you what you were told when you left Harrods, that you are not to talk about Mohamed Al Fayed.
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“‘And if you decide to do that, I want to remind you that I know where your parents live and I know where you live. And wouldn’t it be a shame if something happened to them or you.’ And he hung it up.”
Last week a BBC documentary revealed allegations that Fayed raped five women, with many others alleging sexual misconduct.
On Thursday, the Met asked survivors who had not yet come forward to do so. A spokesman said: “We must ensure that we fully investigate whether anyone else could be pursued for any criminal offences.”
Lawyers are continuing to build a case against Harrods for its alleged failure to protect Fayed’s employees. Harrods managing director Michael Ward, who appointed Fayed in 2006, apologized publicly, saying the billionaire led a “toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of consequence and sexual misconduct”.
Jen said there were others who had yet to be brought to justice – and also other women who had not yet begun to process their trauma. “This time last week, my family didn’t know anything,” she said.
“It was only last week that gave me the courage to talk to my parents, my brother, my husband. I feel now that it’s about everything we can do to make sure that if there are other people out there who are still struggling, that we’re going to be able to turn them on and get help.”
