Delivered to a predator: review of the Al Fayed repairer – This surprising story urgently needed to tell | Television and radio
IT It is disturbingly easy to respond with little more than fatigue to reports of powerful men who exploit women, because there have been so many. The part of us who should issue shock, disgust and just indignation is attenuated through excessive use. And so, when Mohamed al FayedThe billionaire former owner of Harrods died in 2023 and was then credibly accused of being one of the worst sexual transgressors of Great Britain, the collective reaction seemed shrugged.
The new shipping investigations, delivered to a predator: Al Fayed’s repairer, however, should refine our repulsion and determination to fight for change. Based on the 2017 shipping documentary behind closed doors and the BBC 2024 program Predator at HarrodsIt outlines the scope of the illicit of the tycoon: last year, the metropolitan police declared that she believed that Fayed could have raped or abused of at least 111 women and girls, but here a lawyer who works for survivors estimates that the number is more similar to 300.
Dispatches spoke with 16 victims and witnesses, mainly ex Harrods The staff, many of whom give their testimony to public for the first time. The Rawness of the interviews of the survivors, the irreproachable individuals they describe while describing a trauma that has redefined all their lives, recalls that a case would be too much – but their stories correspond. They argue that Harrods’ work culture was the one in which young employees usually blondes were regularly maneuvered in situations where they were alone with the organization’s chair and felt obliged to allow them to harass them or who were raped.
An image emerges from a job in which the interest of the boss for young women was an open secret. Everyone could see women who adapted to the same aesthetic profile were quickly traced to particular roles or sent to commissions that planned to visit the Al Fayed offices on Park Lane, but nobody knew what was going on later and, if they had had suspicions, they felt powerless in speaking. It is a deeply shocking story of money that acquires impunity, but shipments make a further claim on logistics that is even more surprising. It implies an unknown name the day before the transmission, but will be familiar to millions when you read this: Kelly Walker-Duncalf.
Walker-Duncalf, is presumed, was the woman who made it possible for the prey to women. He joined Harrods in 1997 at the age of 19 and, a few years later, he managed a department called “Store approvals”, which meant that he checked the new staff. Each collaborator here describes it as an Autolyte A al Fayed Autolyte who had far influenced his job description: Walker-Duncalf was “Harrods’ second most important person”, according to an interviewee. “He had a degree of power that no one else had in the shop.”
Women who claim to have been mistreated by Al Fayed claim to have been brought to his attention by Walker-Duncal: either he recruited them directly or identified them as employees who should receive an audience with the owner. A former Harrods worker claims to have Polaroid of female employees pinned on a table. But the thesis that Walker-Duncalf has favored Fayed goes beyond practices. The alleged victims say that the presence of a woman, during the initial phase when she was flooded with gifts or given an inexplicable promotion, made her feel bordered or made her more likely to ignore the voice in their head that was telling them to run.
It is also assumed that Walker-Duncalf would have explored for young women not only on the Harrods Ohop Floop but outside the organization, and also beyond the property of Harrods by Al Fayed; And this sometimes would literally give him his victims. An interviewee, Francesca, claims to have met Walker-Duncalf through a common friend in London in 2013, three years after Fayed sold Harrods. He says that Walker-Duncalf told her that Fayed was looking for a new PA, then he brought her to meet him, a meeting that started with Francesca apparently the job was given to him-the agreement sealed with a bag full of money-and ended with her who was raped.
Signaling for shipments, Cathy Newman Track Walker-Duncalf up to Jersey and reaches her by phone, apparently approaching an interview. Their meeting never happens, with Walker-Duncalf instead of issued a declaration through his lawyer, denying to enable or facilitate any al Fayed crime. It is not suggested that Walker-Duncalf was aware of his abuse. The inevitable new police investigations will have to provide a final response to this; For now, this program has made an invaluable contribution to the story of Mohamed al Fayed, a horrible story that urgently needed to be told in full.
