'He knew what Mohamed was doing': Fayed's security chief accused of encouraging abuse | Mohamed Al Fayed

It was May 1991 and Mohamed Al Fayed was in a bad mood: “I told you, no sex with anyone else, no relationship with anyone else.”

The target of the then 62-year-old billionaire's wrath was 20-year-old Jen, who had worked in his personal office at Harrods since he was 16.

“I said, 'What do you mean?' He then listed a whole series of times, places and dates that I had been seen with my friend from the snack hall, and they weren't necessarily during the week. They were on the weekend. They weren't necessarily in London. They were in Surrey.

“The data was very, very accurate, the locations and everything was 100% correct. Mohamed said to me: “You know this John Macnamara.” [Fayed’s head of security] worked for the Met Police. He was a very senior officer in the Met Police.'”

During her four-and-a-half years at Harrods, after joining the luxury store in Knightsbridge as a management trainee in 1986, Jen claims she was repeatedly groped and sexually assaulted – and once strangled – by Fayed.

It started with him “teasing” her with a dildo he had on his desk and progressed to an alleged attempted rape at Fayed's Park Lane flat, she said.

Until a week ago, she hadn't spoken a word about it to her family. Fayed was a monster, she said, but it wasn't the Egyptian businessman's death last year at age 94 that convinced her it was safe to talk to lawyers preparing a lawsuit against Harrods.

The crucial point, she said, was the realization that John Macnamara was dead. “It's just knowing that person is not there and can't hurt you anymore,” she said. “He knew what Mohamed was doing to us and brushed some of it away to make sure it didn’t get any worse.”

Macnamara, a former deputy head of Scotland Yard's fraud division with particular responsibility for the public sector corruption unit, was Fayed's right-hand man; Always by his side, a keeper of secrets and loyal to his boss, until his own death at the age of 83 in 2019.

He had been hired by Fayed in 1987 as security director for House of Fraser (Stores) Ltd, having retired from the Met at the age of 51 with the rank of detective chief superintendent.

Promoted in 1994 to oversee Fayed's overall security needs, he used his knowledge of covert surveillance and a variety of other dark arts to target his boss's enemies, as shown in court documents and his own admissions at parliamentary hearings related to allegations documented by Fayed made cash payments to MP Neil Hamilton in return for answering parliamentary questions.

It was Macnamara who Fayed tasked with proving the veracity of conspiracy theories surrounding the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and his son Dodi Fayed. Macnamara admitted at the coroner's inquest that she had lied about how much alcohol chauffeur Henri Paul had drunk on the night of her death in August 1997.

When Hermina da Silva, a Portuguese nanny of Mohamed Al Fayed's children, said she would not remain silent because she was fired for rejecting her employer's aggressive advances, it was Macnamara who assured his subordinates that she would soon be arrested would be.

And she was, for stealing property from Fayed's brother's flat on Park Lane. She was later released without charge and subsequently received compensation of £12,000.

It was Macnamara who was tasked with shutting down a planned article about Fayed in Vanity Fair in 1995 and then pursuing the journalists and sources behind it. And several women say it was Macnamara who tried to break her will to speak out.

The author and journalist Tom Bower knew Macnamara well. Fayed was a key source for Bower's book about the Harrods owner's former business partner and rival, Tiny Rowland. Macnamara, an avid dirt digger, was the go-between.

“The reason he appointed Macnamara [at Harrods] “This is because Tiny had appointed Roland Macnamara’s predecessor in the fraud department,” Bower told the Guardian. “He copied Rowland – and the reason they chose the fraud team was because they were both fraudsters and needed their expertise.”

Although Macnamara had retired from the Met years ago, he appears to have maintained close relationships with officials. “One time I went to Chelsea police station with him and he was sort of handing out all these baskets and bottles of champagne. It was incredible,” Bower said.

Fayed had discovered Jen a few weeks after she joined the store, when she was assigned to the “management suite” on the fifth floor. “During these four and a half years, I was first subjected to sexual harassment and psychological abuse, then sexual assault and finally attempted rape,” she said.

She has no doubt that Macnamara knew everything. “He was very cold and quite direct,” she said. “There were times when he had seen me crying or leaving Mohamed’s office in a state.”

Fayed provided Jen with an apartment on Park Lane. All employees believed that their phones were being tapped, and the regular replacement of film in the cameras in the offices by Macnamara's people let them know that nothing in the building went unnoticed.

Jen discovered that Fayed was also watching her in the apartment when he called her after she had just gotten out of the bathroom. “I had a problem with my back so I was laid on my bed with my legs against the wall and naked. The phone was next to my bed and I picked it up and he just said, 'Why are you lying like that?' It just chilled me.”

She quietly began looking for a new job, but one day when she arrived at work she was told to go to the office of one of Fayed's assistants, where she also found Macnamara waiting for her. “They said, 'We understand that you have been disloyal and we know that you are looking for another job. No one leaves Mohamed's employment; He decides when you leave.

“'What we're going to do now is you're going to write a letter of resignation, and we're going to tell you what to write, and you're going to write it, and you're leaving today, and that's it.' So they both stood over me and John told me what to write.”

She was escorted out of the workshop by security guards and thrown onto the sidewalk “like a criminal,” she said.

Jen said her next experience with Fayed came after she reluctantly agreed to speak anonymously with journalist Maureen Orth, who was writing an exposé for Vanity Fair.

“I was working in a hotel and out of the blue I got a call from John Macnamara. He said: “I know you're talking to Maureen Orth.” So this is just a call to remind you of what you were told when you left Harrods, that you weren't allowed to talk about Mohamed Al Fayed.

“‘And if you decide to do that, I want to remind you that I know where your parents live and I know where you live. And wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to them or to you? And he hung up.”

Last week, a BBC documentary revealed allegations that Fayed raped five women, while several others alleged sexual misconduct.

On Thursday the Met urged survivors who had not yet come forward to do so. A spokesman said: “We need to ensure we fully consider whether other people could be prosecuted for crimes.”

Lawyers continue to pursue a case against Harrods over its alleged failure to protect Fayed's employees. Harrods chief executive Michael Ward, who was appointed by Fayed in 2006, has publicly apologized, saying the billionaire presided over a “toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussions and sexual misconduct”.

Jen said there are others who have not yet been brought to justice – and other women who have not yet begun to process their trauma. “This time last week my family didn’t know anything,” she said.

“The last week in particular has given me a lot of courage to talk to my parents, my brother and my husband. I feel like it's now about doing what we can to make sure that if there are other people out there who are still struggling, we can get them to come forward and get help.”