The Met Police was told of allegations of sexual assault by Mohamed Al Fayed a decade earlier than it has acknowledged, the BBC can reveal.
Samantha Ramsay, who has since died, was 17 when she reported Al Fayed to the Met in 1995 after he groped her in Harrods. Until now, the Met has said its first report dated from 2005.
Samantha’s family say the Met dismissed her claims. They believe that multiple women could have been saved from sexual abuse if the force had acted.
The Met says there is no history of Samantha’s report on current computer systems, but that in 1995 some reports were paper-based and might not have been transferred.
Met Police told about Al Fayed
While we cannot change what has happened, we do acknowledge that trust and confidence is affected by our approach in the past and we are determined to do better,” Cdr Stephen Clayman said about the Met’s overall response to Al Fayed.
Speaking for the first time, Samantha’s mother Wendy and sister Emma say the police told her in 1995 that multiple women had complained about Al Fayed.
The revelations raise questions about whether the Met has acknowledged the full number of reports it received from victims and admitted the extent of its failure to investigate them.
Wendy and Emma describe Samantha as full of life, bubbly and always happy to help. “Everybody loved her,” Wendy says.
In 1995, Samantha moved to London to pursue her dream of working in Harrods. But her family say what unfolded there changed the course of her life.
“If it hadn’t happened, I do think she’d probably still be here. I really do,” Emma tells the BBC.
Shortly after Samantha started working in the Harrods toy department, she was spotted by Al Fayed, who started inviting her up to his office.
We can read what happened next in Samantha’s own words because, dissatisfied with the police response, she told her story in 1998 to the News of the World. It echoes many of the accounts that have been told since the BBC documentary Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods first revealed allegations of rape in September.
The article says Al Fayed gave Samantha £50 notes and offered her more highly paid jobs. But at their second meeting, he told her she needed to have a medical and urged her to wash herself with Dettol. Al Fayed then sexually assaulted her.
“I was terrified,” Samantha’s quote reads. “And then I rushed out of his office. I ran to the toilets and burst into tears. When Samantha told her supervisor what had happened, she said he just sighed and said: “Another one.”
She said she was then escorted to a room, where Al Fayed was brought in to face her. He began aggressively berating her and fired her on the spot, she said.
“She came out of that feeling quite threatened,” Emma recalls, adding that Al Fayed had told Samantha: “You will not tell anyone about this, because we know where you live. We know your family.
Source: BBC
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