‘Like Meat’: French Prosecutors Probe Al-Fayed Brothers Over Sex Trafficking as Victims Speak Out

For decades, Mohamed Al-Fayed traded on glamourowning Harrods, the Paris Ritz, and luxury yachts. But French lawyers for women who have come forward to accuse him now liken the late Egyptian billionaire to US sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

French authorities began investigating Al-Fayed, who died in 2023 aged 94, and his brother Salah last year amid allegations of a vast system of sex trafficking and abuse on French soil.

“Every time I met Mohamed Al-Fayed, he tried to assault me,” his former personal assistant Kristina Svensson told French police of her two years working at the Ritz.

The Scale of the Allegations

The alleged crimes first came to light in a BBC investigation in September 2024, in which several young women who worked at Harrods accused him of rape and sexual assault.

British police told AFP that 154 victims have so far come forward to say the former owner of Premier League club Fulham abused them. His brother Salah, who died in 2010, is also accused.

But frustrated by the London Metropolitan Police’s investigation of the alleged crimeswhich span more than 35 yearssome victims have turned to France.

“In England they’re ignoring the trafficking… They just want to make it about Al-Fayed and Harrods,” said Rachael Louw, a former Al-Fayed employee, speaking for the first time about her ordeal.

The French investigation, however, is handled by “a unit specialised in human trafficking.” It is “a relief that our cases are actually being recognised as trafficking.”

Rachael Louw’s Story

Louw was 23 when her bosses sent her to Salah Fayed’s yacht on the French Riviera. On 10 February, after 31 years, she was able to testify about what happened there to French investigators.

She was first “spotted” by Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1993 while working as a sales assistant at Harrods. Shortly after, she was placed on a management training scheme, which required her to submit to a medical exam by a Harley Street doctor.

The appointment went far beyond a standard checkupwith a pelvic exam, “thorough breast exam,” smear and HIV tests. The results were not kept confidential.

The report, seen by AFP, was handed over to Harrods and described Louw’s personal life: her parents’ separation, her father in the US, the death of her mother and grandmother. It noted she took birth control pills, had a boyfriend, and was in “excellent” health.

The doctor “sent confidential information to arm the rapist,” said French lawyer Eva Joly, representing Louw and another former assistant.

“These young women were like meat, and they wanted to know if they were fit to consume,” said Caroline Joly, another member of the legal team.

The Ordeal

Several encounters were arranged between Louw and Salah Fayed at his London home, where Louw said she was drugged with “a crack cocaine mix.” She was then offered a job as an assistant to Salah in France and sent there by private jet.

Once on the yacht, her passport was confiscated. “Nothing” resembled the job she signed up for.

“I thought I was supposed to be filing paperwork, making arrangements, organising office work,” she said. Instead, “there was no office, no normal working hours, no time off. I was expected to just be with him.”

Louw recalled appearing alongside Salah at dinners attended by elderly, wealthy men with “young girls and lots of touching.” When she managed to call her boyfriend, who worked at Harrods, he was fired.

One night, Louw woke to find Salah in her bed, claiming he was lonely.

“I went ramrod straight and the rest of the night I was awake just lying there petrified,” she said, fearing any movement would be an invitation.

The Escape

What jolted her to escape was the prospect of being trapped alone with Salah after he bought a speedboat with only one bedroom, telling her “that he would take me to sail around the Italian coast.”

“I knew that if I went on that boat nothing good would happen,” she said.

Panicked, she booked an Air France flight and asked for her passport back. Salah was “very angry,” but released it.

For decades, she feared she was bound by a confidentiality agreement she had signed. But seeing other victims speak out in 2024, she reconsidered.

“How can I be silent? There has to be a cost to what the perpetrators did. Because if they go unpunished, it emboldens the next man. If we women do not speak up we become complicit in our own oppression… powerful men will never change a system that benefits them.”

The Investigation Continues

The French investigation, handled by a specialised human trafficking unit, offers hope to victims who felt failed by the UK process. For Louw and others, it is a chance to be heardand for justice, however delayed, to finally arrive.

{Source: IOL}

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