‘I had to barricade myself in bedroom during work trip’, Mohamed al Fayed accuser says

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

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

Fayed is facing a string of allegations from numerous women, including claims of serial rape, attempted rape, sexual battery and sexual abuse of minors.

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

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

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

“But I’d already worked for high net-worth individuals, so I thought I would take it in my stride,” Katherine said.

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

She alleged her boss was using “sexualised” language and initially she had wondered if it was his sense of humour.

“But within a few days, I was starting to get worried,” she said.

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

She had thought security staff and housekeepers would also be staying overnight at the property, but they all left in the evening.

“Suddenly I realised then it’s just you and him and high gates and security outside, so you’re not going anywhere,” she said.

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

“The next day, he called me into his office and shouted at me for blocking my door and said I was to never do that again,” she said. “So the assumption is that he had tried to get into the room and was unable to, and I was terrified, absolutely terrified by that. So I knew there was no way I could go back a second time.”

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

“I fought him off and told him that, under no uncertain terms, I was only a PA and that wouldn’t be happening. 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 on Thursday it had been contacted by more than 400 people, including further alleged victims and witnesses.

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

“I was hired at the same time as another person. 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 just assumed it was all happening to me and I was at fault,” she said.

The former PA said she had thought: “What am I doing that’s getting me taken away from the rest of the team and put in these situations in his office behind a closed door where he’s acting like this?”

Harrods has previously said it is “utterly appalled” by the claims of abuse and said it is a “very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Fayed between 1985 and 2010”.