Mohamed El Fayed

[CassieMaddox]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6x635wpjxo

This is shocking. It is scary these men are so powerful they have to die before the scale of their offending becomes clear.

I think NDAs should be banned. Rich men are able to use them to cover up their crimes.

He was facilitated though wasn't he. His head of security threatened the lady that spoke at the press conference.
The first paragraph of this document makes interesting reading publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmstnprv/030ii/sp0112.htm

Pity , Macnamara is dead also.

Thanks, will watch this.

@CassieMaddox you're right, but I think the difference is people are less and less surprised with each of these type of revelations. And Savile was enabled by charities, the bbc, hospitals, all types of institutions. Al fayed was all powerful in his own institution, so the question 'how could this happen?' is so much easier to answer.

I hope for the victims sake they keep it front page for a very long time though.

I'm sure there will be some sort of enquiry within Harrods.

Jimmy Saville's crimes involved government instituitions, hospitals, the BBC - all colluding to some degree - and also involved children, the disabled, and even the dead - that's why it led to such a huge enquiry.

You're being needlessly melodramatic, perhaps women are now no longer quite so shocked and just fatalistic especially about historic crimes.
That cynicism is protective.
Would you have us rend our clothes and throw ourselves on a burning pyre to satisfy the need for weeping and wailing.
Id rather just identify the bastards, and emasculate them literally or figuratively.

Savile had accommodation at and unrestricted access around Broadmoor ffs. Who signed that off?

I like to think that some of the (no doubt many) sleazy old men still living, who've engaged in similar behaviour, are starting to get twitchy about revelations coming out in their lifetime.

Savile’s crimes were of a different order of magnitude and enormity than El Fayed’s.

Having said that, Savile was known about too, for decades. I was surprised that so many individuals and organisations got away with saying they weren’t aware. I probably knew through Private Eye, which at the very least dropped some very heavy hints, but there were other sources too.

It's very much worth listening to the world at one piece on this:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0023094?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

P Diddy seems a better comparison

There’s a difference in public persona between AlFayed and Saville, as well as the obvious difference of who was in charge.

Fayed managed to behave like a rich man with access to a personal harem, in properties owned by him, with women employed by him. He was a Sultan, or Emperor, in his world. It’s unsurprising.

Saville was a celebrity fundraiser who turned out to be abusing children, disabled, dead people in government buildings and public places. That is far more extraordinary and shocking.

A man being abusive in his own home is not unusual. The size of Fayed’s ‘home’ is unusual.

I knew someone in the 90s who worked at Harrods. It was certainly no secret at that time that he had his favourite ladies or would invite someone pretty upstairs

You were there at the same time as someone we know who worked there one summer. She came home telling us about this. Everyone knew then to avoid him she said

Otherwise she had a great experience.

I was eyebrows raised at the hypocrisy of the BBC doing this expose when they've hidden their pervs

I'm sick of this shit as well. Men really hate us.

I can see that.

At the same time they've a fucking duty to make sure these things don't happen again within their corporation

Looking back it was absolutely bloody terrible. I was around 16/17. I’m also brunette and while I was a very pretty girl back then, he had a preference for blondes. The “harem” were all blondes. I don’t like using that term because it suggests they were complicit and they absolutely were not. Horrible little man. I was also employed by a brand and placed in store so while I needed Harrods clearance, I did not go through an interview process there. I am truly surprised it’s taken this long for this to come out as it was such an open secret at the time.

This has been common knowledge for decades. When a friend of mine had a Christmas job there, they would hide the young female staff in the stock room when Fayed came round, to avoid him assaulting them.

My friend was a blonde but well warned.

I remember thinking when he was on TV what a disgrace old man he was. Everyone knew, yet nothing was done. The CPS, met police were informed in 2018-2019-2023 still nothing was done

I was looking round Harrods with a friend and there was a statue of Al Fayed in the middle of the shop (can't remember which department) my friend had an Egyptian husband and said they like that sort of thing, wonder if it's still there.

The Queen never liked him. She was such a good judge of character.

It is awful what he did (although I'm not surprised he was that sort of man), and it needed exposing, but I am suspicious of the BBC of releasing this documentary on the week that Huw Edwards was sentenced.

It does seem to be a typical BBC distraction technique to focus on a non-BBC sexual abuser so close when the BBC has a number of questions to answer.

Again I am glad this stuff is being revealed about Al-Fayed, but suspicious over the timing.

Met police lost/destroyed evidence on one of the victims phones, she was 15.

I really think now that society generallydoes not give one shiny shit about women and girls. I have female friends that NAMALT asbsoon as I try to broach VAWG.

I was literally about to type that my boss used to send me to the stock room when Fayed had his walkabouts.

What happened is awful (and how institutional it was) but I'm just gobsmacked it's a surprise and there are so many reports on it now. It was totally open when I worked there (mid 00s), it barely counts as an 'open secret' because it wasn't treated as a secret.

So OP, it's not that I don't care, I just hadn't even realised him being a predator wasn't in the public domain.

I felt the same when all the Russell Brand stuff came out. I thought everyone knew!

It's just a shame he never got punished for any of it while he was alive.

A genuine question, why did no one do these documentaries while it was going on? Fear of legal repercussions?

That's exactly what I was thinking. Savile was dabbing in so many things, and it was children he was after, including very vulnerable children in hospital.
How he got access to so many children and the nurses knew but were powerless.

Hardly, given the bailing out of Andrew and blindness to his behaviour.

I suspect more that in life beyond Queening she just didn't like the kind of OTT obsequiousness/gifts the likes of Al Fayed were prone to and thought he would attempt to win her over with it. Didn't seem her style really.