Teen daughter of Reagan’s UK ambassador suffered attempted rape by Al Fayed

The teenage daughter of Ronald Reagan’s UK ambassador was forced to bite the arm of serial sex beast Mohammed Al Fayed as he attempted to rape her on his luxury yacht.

Melissa Price often accompanied her father Charles, a trusted friend of the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan, to functions.

She first encountered the Egyptian tycoon at a dinner party hosted at Winfield House, the American ambassador’s official residence in London’s Regent’s Park, where Al Fayed offered the fine art student a job buying furnishings for his array of homes.

But just weeks later she was told she needed to go to France where she says the monster attempted to rape her on his yacht off the coast of St Tropez.

The incident has been kept quiet for decades but Mrs Thatcher, the late Queen and the Reagan’s were all informed in the immediate aftermath.

Melissa revealed how he forced himself against her from behind and gripped his arms around her so tightly she was “unable to move the upper part of my body, constricting my breathing” before unleashing a string of depraved demands and sexual threats.

“He was trying to rape me,” she said. “It was the first time I had felt in true danger. We were surrounded by miles of black sea, no sight of land.”

She finally managed to fend him off by biting his arm but claims members of the businessman’s British staff heard her cries for help but ignored them.

She added: “It was a primal act of self-defence that tore through with the fabric of his Egyptian kaftan. He made his intentions clear as to what he was going to do to me and I wasn’t going to let that happen at any cost.

“He is a monster. Al Fayed took me against my will. That changed my life and will always be with me.”

Melissa, now 57, revealed that the “dark, disturbing days” in September 1986, led to a fallout involving the most senior figures in the British Establishment, which she believes crushed Al Fayed’s desperate hopes of acquiring British citizenship.

Her failure to check in with her family during the 48 hours she was held in France triggered alarms at No10, the White House and CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Melissa claims her ambassador father was a “formidable force to be reckoned with” and the “malevolent ambitions of Fayed to gain British citizenship while assaulting the daughter of a diplomat didn’t stand a chance”.

But she said the ordeal impacted greatly on her own previously carefree life, studying the history of art at London fine arts school. Weeks after starting work she was told they were going to Paris.

She said: “He took me to his apartment on the Champs-Elysees, and then to The Ritz, where we had a supposed ‘work’ dinner. I felt even more uncomfortable when Fayed arranged for us to sit at a cosy corner banquette, somewhere you’d sit on a date, not with your teenage work assistant.

“During dinner, he started putting his hands under my skirt and on my legs. He said, ‘You are getting into my bed tonight’. I made it clear that I would not be sleeping with him. Ever.”

That night, the electricity in her room was turned off as a punishment and she was not allowed to leave her room by a security guard.

Al Fayed had also taken her diplomat passport, which she’d asked him many times to give back.

“I felt like his prisoner in a foreign country with no means of escape,” recalls Melissa. The next morning she saw a French girl, “no older than 15”, having breakfast in his apartment.

When Al Fayed told her she was going with him to St Tropez to his yacht, Melissa protested but was told she would then be returned to London the following day.

She says: “I didn’t believe him, but I had no recourse and had no choice but to accompany him.”

On the yacht, she remembers Middle-Eastern music playing as the Harrods boss demanded sex. She says: “Nothing would have made me want to have sex with this pitiful creature. But I think my belligerence may have enticed him even more.

“Fayed was wearing a kaftan and trying to come on to me at dinner in an enclosed, airless, tastelessly decorated dining room. I felt verbally raped during hours of being subjected to his depraved descriptions of what he wanted to do to me.

“He began to get more and more angry and insulted that I didn’t give into his sickening wishes. “Surrendering was not an option”

“I was stuck on this boat with a sick, vile man nearly the same age as my father. He would have squashed him in seconds if he’d known what he was going to do. Fayed told everyone on deck to go away. This was the first time I had felt in true danger. I was shaking.’

“I said to him, ‘My father is going to get you if you do something to me. If you hurt me, you’ll be in real trouble’. He tried to belittle my father, boasting that he was superior in position and wealth. He was in fact a coward.

After biting Al Fayed as he attempted to rape her, he screamed in pain prompting his staff to rush to his aid and she managed to flee to her cabin.

She added: “His anger terrified me. He was so mad. I thought he might come in the night and come and get me, maybe kill me.

“I was locked in my cabin. There was no escape. Next thing, someone was at my door, knocking loudly. It was around 4.30am and still dark. There was a boat to take me to land with two men, his security, and a female member of staff.’

To her horror, the boat that arrived to take her to shore carried ‘a replacement, a girl around the same age.

She said: “We were being swapped, another girl to the slaughterhouse. I realised that Fayed was trafficking women for his twisted desires”.

Months later, Mrs Thatcher hosted a lunch where Melissa told her “everything that happened including the things he said he wanted to do to me on the boat. She was repulsed and angry.

She added: “I would like to say that is why he didn’t get his passport.”

Mr and Mrs Price also disclosed their daughter’s ordeal to Ronald and Nancy Reagan, with Mrs Reagan “repulsed by what Fayed wanted to do”.

A BBC expose last month, entitled Al Fayed: Predator At Harrods, detailed the stories of more than 20 female employees at Harrods who said that he sexually assaulted or raped them.

Since then almost 300 women have come forward to accuse the former Harrods owner of abusing them with the luxury store confirming it is in negation with over 200 former employees, including Melissa.

Al Fayed died last year aged 94.