TRAFFICKING
Today the Met Police confirmed that Al-Fayed’s enablers are being investigated for exactly what survivors have always said it was.
Today the Metropolitan Police confirmed that three women have been interviewed under caution in connection with the Fayed and Harrods abuse scandal. They were questioned on suspicion of aiding and abetting rape and sexual assault, assisting the commission of serious sexual offences, and - crucially - human trafficking for sexual exploitation.
I want to focus on that last one, because the word ‘trafficking’ matters more than I can adequately express.
From the very beginning of my investigation - which started eight years ago when my wife Sophia first told me, through her tears, what had happened to her during her time at Harrods - I have been clear that what Fayed’s enablers did constituted trafficking. They identified women, they recruited them, they delivered them, and they knew exactly what was going to happen to those women when they did. They did it over and over again, for decades. That is trafficking, and today the Met Police confirmed that is exactly how they are treating it.
The three names have not been made public, but of course they are well known to me.
This has been an eight-year investigation that began in a garden shed in Staffordshire and led to the BBC documentary ‘Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods’, the Channel 4 Dispatches special ‘Delivered to a Predator: Al-Fayed’s Fixer’, and the 60 Minutes Australia special ‘Horror at Harrods’.
Since those productions aired, more than 400 survivors have come forward, the Met Police have received over 150 criminal complaints, Harrods has been forced to acknowledge institutional failure and begin paying substantial compensation to the women it failed to protect, and an All-Party Parliamentary Group has been established in Parliament.
Today’s announcement represents something that survivors have waited years to hear, because the investigation is no longer just about the dead man at the top - it has now reached the people around him who made his offending possible.
The enablers are no longer invisible. There are others out there who may have believed they had gotten away with it after so long, and to them I would simply say - you haven’t - and anyone who still thinks that is delusional.
My approach has always been strategic and steady in order to achieve maximum impact, and I believe that approach was vindicated when Predator at Harrods aired in September 2024 and changed everything. This work continues, and accountability and justice are coming for every single one of them.
To any survivor reading this who hasn't yet come forward, I would encourage you to do so in confidence, because this is real - it's happening - and you are not alone.
The full Met Police statement can be read here.