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“I had to barricade myself in the room during a work trip,” says Mohamed al Fayed’s accuser | UK News
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“I had to barricade myself in the room during a work trip,” says Mohamed al Fayed’s accuser | UK News

A former personal assistant to Mohamed al Fayed said she had to barricade herself in her room while staying at the late Harrods owner’s home.

Katherine, who did not want to give her last name, told Sky News that on another occasion Fayed he imposed himself on her and she “fought him.”

Fayed faces a chain of accusations of numerous women, including allegations of serial rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and child sexual abuse.

The billionaire died last year before the allegations were made public.

Katherine said she was in her early thirties when she was hired as Fayed’s senior personal assistant and at the time thought it would be “the best thing I had ever written on my CV”.

When she applied for the job, it was only advertised that she was working for a “high net worth person”, so it was “a little daunting” to find out she would be working with Fayed as he was a “well-known figure”.

“But I’d already worked for high-net-worth people, so I thought I’d take it slow,” Katherine said.

However, within just a day or two, she began to feel “really uncomfortable” with Fayed, she said.

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He alleged that his boss was using “sexualized” language and at first wondered if it was his sense of humor.

“But after a few days I started to worry,” he said.

During a work trip to one of Fayed’s private residences outside Paris, Katherine claims she had to barricade herself inside her room.

She had thought that the security staff and housekeeping staff would also spend the night on the property, but they all left for the night.

“I suddenly realized it was just you and him, with high gates and security outside, so you’re not going anywhere,” he said.

Katherine claims that “I found myself sleeping in a room where there was no lock on the door, and I had to lock it from the inside.”

“The next day, he called me into his office and yelled at me for blocking my door and told me to never do that again,” she said. “So he had supposedly tried to get into the room and couldn’t, and that terrified me, absolutely terrified. So I knew there was no way he could come back a second time.”

On another occasion, Katherine claims that Fayed tried to force himself on her in his office.

“I resisted and told him that, in no uncertain terms, I was just a personal assistant and that wasn’t going to happen. And I was basically out of a job shortly after that,” she said.

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A group representing alleged victims of Fayed said Thursday it had been contacted by more than 400 people, including other alleged victims and witnesses.

But Katherine said she had thought she was alone and “it was something I was doing wrong.”

“I was hired at the same time as someone else. We both had the same role and he (Fayed) kept us on totally different shifts. So I never had anyone I could go to and say, ‘You know, is this happening to you?’ ?’ “So I assumed that everything was happening to me and that I was to blame,” he said.

The former PA said she had thought, “What am I doing to be taken away from the rest of the team and put in these situations in his office, behind a closed door, where he acts like this?”

Harrods has previously said it is “completely shocked” by the abuse allegations and said it is a “very different organization to the one Fayed owned and controlled between 1985 and 2010”.