17-05-2025
Harrods' ex-owner allegedly abused hundreds of women. Some Australian survivors say he had help
Former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed is alleged to have sexually assaulted hundreds of women. More survivors have come forward after his death in 2023. Source: Channel 4 Watch Dateline's latest episode 'Delivered to a Predator' on 20 May at 9:30pm AEST on SBS or SBS On Demand. Content warning: This article contains references to sexual assault and rape. Australian Rebecca (not her real name) had been working on the shop floor at Harrods, a luxury department store in London, for only two weeks when a senior employee approached her and told her she had scored 100 per cent in a secret shopper survey. As a reward, Rebecca received a £50 gift voucher and the chance to meet the chairman of Harrods at the time, Mohamed Al Fayed. The Egyptian billionaire, who lived most of his life and built his wealth in the United Kingdom, owned Harrods until 2010. The senior employee, Kelly Walker-Duncalf, escorted Rebecca into Al Fayed's office and left the two alone. "I was gripped by the chairman on the face and kissed on the lips," Rebecca recalls 19 years later, her voice trembling. "I was shocked. I didn't know if it was a cultural greeting. I was just naive. I was 22 and had no idea what I was in for." She says Al Fayed wanted her to work in his office as one of his personal assistants and gave her £800 in cash to buy work clothes.
That year, in 2005, Rebecca started working as a PA in Al Fayed's office, mostly shadowing other PAs, and says she was never tasked with anything of substance. Until one day, she was asked to deliver a package to Al Fayed at his apartment in one of London's most expensive neighbourhoods, Mayfair. "There was on the bed, handbags, dresses, shoes," she recalls. "And a comment was made [that] all of this could be mine if I play by the rules. I was asked to remove his shoes." She says soon Al Fayed was on top of her, raping her, as she asked him to stop.
Stories of young women being taken to Al Fayed's office circulated in the company at the time. But it was only after the billionaire's death in 2023 at the age of 94 that the full scale of his abuse of women came to light. He is alleged to have sexually assaulted hundreds of women. Many survivors who came forward with the allegations , and some former Harrods staff, point to one woman who is alleged to have made his abuse possible for years: Walker-Duncalf. She is alleged to have used her senior position at Harrods from 2004 to recruit young women for Al Fayed. She left the company in 2013, three years after Al Fayed sold it to new owners.
Barrister Dean Armstrong is representing some of the survivors. "The name that comes up as someone who was facilitating the introductions, putting them into a position where abuse could take place, was Kelly Walker-Duncalf," he says. "Her name came up at least 50 per cent of the time." Through her lawyer, Walker-Duncalf said that she did not, at any stage, "facilitate" or "enable" any of Al Fayed's crimes.
According to her CV, Walker-Duncalf joined the Harrods shopfloor in 1997. She worked her way up to becoming the head of store approvals, the department that vetted new recruits, in 2004. Former employees allege that she used her position to scout for young women for Al Fayed for sexual purposes.
Anne-Marie was 21 when she got a job at the store approvals at Harrods in 2005 and worked closely with Walker-Duncalf for nearly a year. "When I was working in reception, she had said to me early on:''Please send any attractive candidates that you see directly to my office'," she recalls. "Attractive blondes was a real focus for her." Anne-Marie, who now lives in Australia, says Walker-Duncalf would take Polaroid photos of some candidates, pin them on a board, and regularly take the photos up to Al Fayed.
"She was the second most important person in Harrods. She may not have had the power on paper, but she had a degree of power that nobody else in the store had." Anne-Marie witnessed what she describes as a constant flow of young women being sent to Al Fayed's office. "She would have sent hundreds of girls up to his office," she says. One day, her turn came to meet the chairman in person. She says the first time he sexually assaulted her he kissed her on the mouth, and on one occasion tried to rape her.
"Only when something had happened to me, I sort of put two and two together and realised that she was sending up those girls and young women as prey for Al Fayed," she says. Asked whether she considered reporting the incident, Anne-Marie says: "there was very much a culture of fear and intimidation that existed within Harrods". Former staff say that during Al Fayed's ownership of Harrods, high-level security and surveillance created a climate of fear at the company, protecting not only him but Walker-Duncalf too.
But some women did report Al Fayed and Walker-Duncalf to the police. In 2013, Francesca was 20 and had recently moved to London looking for a job in fashion, when a mutual friend introduced her to Walker-Duncalf, who had just left her job at Harrods. Walker-Duncalf told her that Al Fayed was looking for a PA, and the two women drove to his office. Francesca says he raped her the evening they met. She went to the police the next morning.
As the police investigated her allegations and ran medical examinations, Francesca felt ashamed and terrified that he or his people would come after her. Two weeks after first reporting the rape, she withdrew her complaint. But in 2015, she asked the police to reopen the case. In a few months, she received a letter from the Crown Prosecution Service informing her there was not enough evidence to prove that the sex was non-consensual. "It's been really hard to rebuild myself after that happened to me, and it's been a long, long process," Francesca says. A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service said the agency was improving its standard of communication and wants "anyone affected by sexual offences to come forward with confidence they will be treated with compassion and respect." "In this case, the prosecutors who looked at the files of evidence concluded there was no realistic prospect of conviction and no charges were brought," the statement read. "We are determined to secure justice in as many rape and serious sexual offences as possible.
London's Metropolitan Police now admits that between 2005 and 2023, it received 21 reports of sexual abuse against Al Fayed, but no charges were ever brought. Police now believe that number to be more than 100. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson urged "anyone with information, whether they were directly affected by Mohamed Al Fayed's actions or aware of others who may have been involved, or committed offences, to come forward". Harrods is now under new management and a spokesperson also encouraged all survivors "to make their claims to the Harrods scheme, where they can apply for compensation as well as support through an independent survivor advocate". If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732, or visit . In an emergency, call 000.
