For more than 40 years, warnings about Mohamed Al-Fayed circulated through police stations, newsrooms, court files and corporate boardrooms. Women and girls spoke. Journalists investigated. Evidence surfaced again and again and patterns were visible long before the authorities admitted there was anything to see. This is not a story about one man’s actions. It is about a British establishment that repeatedly chose not to act even when risks were known, disclosures consistent and harm ongoing. It is about a British establishment that is still choosing not to act today.
Britain: A libel haven for the wealthy
Throughout these years, when institutions did not act, journalists often tried. Time and again, those attempts collided with the sharp edge of Britain’s plaintiff-friendly libel regime. This historic silencing matters because it shaped survivors’ expectations of what would happen if they dared to speak. It matters, because it adds to the information that was available to the British state.
English libel law does not require a claimant to prove that a story is false. It requires the defendant (usually a newspaper, sometimes a survivor) to prove their allegations are substantially true, often at prohibitive financial risk. For sexual assault and exploitation cases, this is a brutal and often unattainable demand: survivors are expected to produce evidence that institutions never gathered, investigations never pursued and perpetrators ensured would never exist. Winning a libel case in Britain does not necessarily mean that the allegations were untrue. Often it simply means that exposing the truth is unaffordable.
It is small wonder that Britain enjoys a global reputation as a libel haven for the wealthy – a system so skewed that powerful claimants can use the threat of litigation to chill reporting, intimidate survivors and bury public-interest scrutiny. The 2013 Defamation Act amendments did little to address these issues.
Before the 2024 election, Keir Starmer publicly committed to tackling SLAPPs, saying: “Such behaviour is intolerable and we will tackle the use of SLAPPs to protect investigative journalism, alongside access to justice.” Since his party took office, that promise has not been delivered.
Decades of detailed reporting met by decades of state-endorsed legal bullying
In the case of Al-Fayed, the system operated with mechanical precision to stifle the truth and to convey to survivors that it was a system arranged to protect reputations before it protected us. Below are some examples. I am sure there are many others, which never saw the light of day.
- 1995 – Vanity Fair, ’Holy War at Harrods’ – Reported harassment and corruption in the store. Al-Fayed sued. The case was settled confidentially; material that might have corroborated survivors’ accounts disappeared from public view, only to re-emerge after Al-Fayed’s death.
- 1997 – ITV’s The Big Story: Sex, Lies and Audiotape – Broadcast testimonies of coercion. Rape allegations were cut under legal pressure. Al-Fayed sued and won, not because the claims were proven false, but because defending truth in court was unaffordable.
- 1998 – News of the World – Published Samantha Ramsay’s account. Al-Fayed sued; the paper apologised and paid damages. While her allegations were not disproved, Samantha’s credibility was destroyed. Whatever the legal outcome, the human message was clear: a survivor who speaks can find her credibility publicly dismantled.
- 1998 – Henry Porter and Tom Bower – Separately documented credible allegations of espionage, intimidation and abuse. Porter noted that “it is impossible to ignore the evidence in Bower’s book”. Institutions did exactly this.
- 2008 – Mail on Sunday – Reported a Harrods executive under investigation for assault of a 15-year-old. After legal letters from Al-Fayed’s lawyers, he was not named.
- 2017–18 – Channel 4’s Al-Fayed: Behind Closed Doors and follow-up reporting – Multiple women came forward. The Met declined to act, citing Al-Fayed’s ’ill health’, despite the fact that police have a legal duty to investigate regardless. His son later claimed Al-Fayed had faked dementia. By that time, Harrods was owned by Qatar Holding. The company was given a right to reply in 2017 and, survivors understand, chose not to comment.
It is striking – and damning – that while the 2017 documentary prompted many more survivors to disclose, neither police action nor media follow-up followed.
Women spoke, journalists investigated, lawyers intervened, and institutions stayed still
Across four decades, the cycle never changed: women spoke, journalists investigated, lawyers intervened, and institutions stayed still. Britain’s libel laws functioned as both sword and shield, enabling the powerful to sue truth into silence while deterring the press from holding them to account.
During the 2024 Parliamentary debate on SLAPPs, Joe Powell MP said of the Al-Fayed case: “Imagine how many women’s lives would not have been ruined if anti-SLAPP legislation had been in place and journalists had been able to report freely on the case.” He was right, but as a survivor, I’d add something crucial. In the Al-Fayed case, a remarkable amount of reporting did make it to print, even if briefly. Women did speak out during his lifetime, repeatedly, consistently and at great personal risk. So the real question is this: why didn’t the authorities act on the truth that was already public? When allegations are known, victims are speaking and patterns are unmistakable, yet nothing happens, the barrier isn’t only libel law.
A country that safeguards reputations, not the public
Starmer vowed to reform libel law. But the deeper question persists: why does British justice still function as a fortress for the wealthy, while those harmed struggle even to cross the threshold? As long as reputation takes precedence over public safety, and silence can be bought more easily than justice can be accessed, Britain will remain a country where power is protected and the vulnerable are left to fend for themselves. The choice now is simple: meaningful reform, or continued impunity.
After Al-Fayed’s death, Tom Bower wrote: “For decades, all this was known. And yet Britain’s libel laws and a supine establishment allowed a criminal to escape justice.” He was right on both fronts.
*Isabella is a Pseudonym. The author is a Fayed/Harrods survivor and a founding member of No One Above (NOA), a survivor-led collective formed by individuals with lived experience of abuse and exploitation connected to Fayed, focused on barriers to justice and accountability in cases of abuse. www.nooneabove.org.
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