Woman claims she was trafficked to the Highlands and assaulted by Fayed brother
The chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Fayed survivors says she is ‘not surprised’ at the latest revelations
A woman has claimed she was trafficked to the Highlands, drugged and sexually assaulted by the brother of Mohamed Al Fayed.
The young Harrods employee said she was flown on the Fayed’s private family jet to Balnagown, their estate in Easter Ross, in the 1990s. She says she was then isolated and abused by Salah Fayed.
She is one of hundreds of women who have alleged abuse by the Fayed brothers since Mohamed Al Fayed’s death in 2023. His brother Salah died in 2010.
The woman told the BBC she began working at Harrods and thought moving to work with Salah Fayed would be better as "Mohamed seemed creepy to me”. She was then flown to Inverness and taken by private vehicle to Balnagown.
She said: “The first time he forced me to take drugs he tried to trick me into taking them.
“He had me locked in a room. He said ‘you need to take this, it’s good for you’.
“He lied about what it was and when I refused he screamed at me and forced me to take it.
“The drugs were part of his method of assaulting me.”
She added: “I was isolated, for most of the time. He was a very cruel man.
“He knew I had some vulnerabilities and he exploited them. He made me feel I was a terrible person.”
The woman said: “By the time I got away, I was very aware of what he was doing and it took some effort to get away.
“I was by then aware that I could not have been the only one. I tried to raise the alarm, I tried to warn people.”
Earlier this year Police Scotland said it was carrying out further investigations into allegations connected to the Balnagown Estate.
A spokesperson said: “Three people have been identified in connection with offending against a number of victims.
“Our inquiries are ongoing and it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
The woman said she would welcome compensation being paid to the victims: “You’ve lost years of your life. You’ve had all these treatment costs, it’s impacted your career, impacted your family, so yes they do need to put that right.
“The girl I was when I was sent to that man is gone.
“I don’t know who she would have been or what her life would have been like.
“My life’s work has been recovering from this. It has been a bitter, bitter, decades-long struggle.”
Wendy Chamberlain, the MP for North East Fife and co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on survivors of Al Fayed, said the woman’s testimony was “very powerful”.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland Breakfast, Ms Chamberlain said: “Hearing that this morning suggests there are more survivors than the group is aware of.
“In the first instance there are still criminal justice outcomes because Fayed and his brother didn’t act alone - they were part of a wider network of enablers who brought women to them to be abused.
“It’s not just Harrods, there are other locations … it’s important that if we want to present other powerful men enabling terrible abuse, we need to understand how and why it happened and secure criminal justice outcomes to ensure systemically we are doing everything we can.”
She said she is in written correspondence with Police Scotland about the allegation at Balnagown and is hoping to meet with the force soon to discuss it further.
Ms Chamberlain said the all-party parliamentary group is also hoping to meet Prime Minister Andy Burnham, having met with former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer earlier in the year.
She added: “I’d love to say I am surprised, but it feels like a relentless drumbeat of powerful men abusing women, and in many places powerful men whose behaviour was well-known and not stopped.
“It reminds me of Jimmy Savile - the scale and depravity of it all.
“I’m not surprised and we need to do much more as a society to ensure such behaviour cannot develop in the way it has in relation to Fayed and his network.”
While Police Scotland is looking into the allegations at the Highland estate, the Metropolitan Police is also investigating separate allegations against Mohamed Al Fayed.
In a statement, the Met Police said: “Seven suspects have so far been interviewed under caution on suspicion of offences including aiding and abetting rape and sexual assault, assisting the commission of sexual offences, and human trafficking for sexual exploitation.
“To date, 168 victims have now come forward. We will continue to assess victim testimonies for evidence of human trafficking.”
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