I was raped 15 times by Mohamed Al Fayed when I worked at Harrods – he had ‘favourite girls’ and made us have STI tests

SARA Blackiston remembers being thrilled when she secured a job as a hosiery assistant at Harrods as a young woman – and even more elated when she was quickly singled out by billionaire boss Mohamed Al Fayed, who asked her to join his elite mobile sales team.

But Sara claims the late department store supremo’s “promotion” was an evil ruse to enable him to rape his junior employee multiple times, leaving her life in tatters. She is one of more than 200 survivors of alleged sexual abuse by fighting for compensation that could total £150m.

“The first time I met Fayed I thought he was harmless with a big personality but looking back, I was naive and gullible,” says Sara, of the late department store supremo.

Sara was hired to work in the hosiery department of the in the summer of 1993 when she was just 19 and within a month she had met its super rich owner, larger than life

“I had just come out of boarding school and had started at university but I left my degree to work at Harrods, thinking it would help my career,” she says.

“I was really quite naive.

“Harrods was exciting and seemed like somewhere I could really excel.”

Sara, from Essex, says at first everything went to plan and she was soon invited to work in Fayed’s mobile sales team.

But she claims she soon worked out he only recruited attractive young women for this team, saying it afforded him the opportunity to remove them from the shop floor whenever he wished.

“This was effectively a way of controlling where his ‘favourite’ girls were,” says Sara.

“If they were taken off the shop floor to meet Fayed or go on trips, that department would be compensated by using other girls to cover shifts.

“He would have his ‘favourite girls’, it was on and off so each day you didn’t know if you were one of them.

“You could be cast aside and then back in his good favour within a day.”

“I found out quite quickly when I later went to work in the Chairman’s Office that he had a video camera there,” she says.

“He had a joystick and basically just went through all the departments and picked out girls.

“They got security to go down, talk to the manager and get them sent up so he could introduce himself.”

Sara says being one of the boss’s favourites was not something to aspire to and a couple of weeks after she first met Fayed, she claims his predatory behaviour began in earnest.

“I was asked to come up to the Chairman’s Office on my own,” she says.

“I was put in a side room and waited there for what seemed like a long time, not entirely sure why I was there.

“Then he came bowling into the room and seemed friendly.

“I didn’t think too much of it as I’m a fairly huggy person – he had this BIG personality and I just thought it was that.”

Sara claims she was next invited to visit at his home, 60 Park Lane, the heavily guarded epicentre of his personal and business empire.

With only her work uniform to wear, she says she was first handed a “pink slip” allowing her to choose an outfit from the store.

“I picked up trousers, a shirt, a jumper and ankle brown boots,” she says.

“I was first directed into the boardroom of the Chairman’s Office at Harrods where I waited until, all of a sudden, a security guard came in and asked me to follow him to the cars outside.

“We raced, pretty quickly, over to what was 60 Park Lane.

“After arriving, I went up the lift with Fayed.

“It was very small, and he was very close to me.

“I recall he tried to hold my hand which felt very uncomfortable.”

Sara claims Fayed then asked to have dinner and champagne with him, saying she agreed while feeling “very nervous”.

Her instincts seem to have been right – she claims the boss then asked her to join him in the shower.

“I think I was massively taken with the whole situation and felt very giddy and just giggled when he asked me anything sexual,” she says.

“I went for a shower, he said he was going to massage me and would help me relax.

“He asked me to use the specific stuff in the shower to make me all clean and then come out in the bathrobe.

“I put on the robe and came outside and was in his bedroom and he was lying on the bed with the sheets pulled down and naked underneath, as I could see his penis and bare chest.

“I was super nervous and didn’t know what to do.”

Sara claims Fayed went onto ask her to lie next to him on the bed before kissing her, getting on top of her and raping her.

“It was over in a few minutes, and I remember he immediately didn’t say anything apart from to go and have a shower and then to come back out in my clothes,” she says.

“I felt really nauseous, emotional and dizzy.

“I sat on the toilet, just sitting there for a while, and then managed to get in the shower and clean myself off, scrubbing it all away.”

Sara says she went to work the next day feeling “numb” – and claims Fayed’s alleged abuse did not end there.

She alleges Fayed raped her 15 times in locations around the world, including Bangkok and St Tropez.

“From this day there were many further instances of this behaviour,” she says.

“This led me to travelling with Fayed and going to 60 Park Lane.”

Sara says she was subjected to regular medical examinations too, including sexual health tests, by a doctor who had a prestigious office at Harley Street.

“I was told by them that Fayed ‘cared’ about his girls who worked at Harrods as there were some horrible, dirty men out there, they said that was why we underwent these tests,” Sara claims.

“He did not like germs or possible diseases and got everyone checked out who worked closely with him and his family.

“I think I briefly questioned it but not any further.”

Sara says she never discussed the abuse at Harrods with her fellow staff members.

“I spent my early 30s terrified about whether he would come after me.”

Sara left Harrods in 2001, saying she blocked out the abuse she had experienced during her time there until after , when Harrods launched a redress scheme to settle the against him.

She says her life was hugely impacted in the meantime.

“It really affected me mentally, I made the wrong choices and not a day has gone past when I wasn’t scared,” says Sara, who is a PA and single mum to two boys.”

Sara is now part of more than 200 survivors working with KP Law for further redress, with the firm recently estimating that compensation claims could total as much as £150 million.

A Harrods spokesperson said: “Harrods continues to support the bravery of all survivors of  Fayed’s appalling abuse in coming forward.

“The Harrods of today is a very different organisation to the one owned and controlled by Fayed and seeks to put the welfare of our employees at the heart of everything we do.

“We support all survivors in their pursuit of justice and continue to work closely with the Met police on its investigation, welcoming the continued progress being made on Operation Cornpoppy.”