Man’s six-year hunt to expose Al Fayed abuse
Written by BBC on October 13, 2024
A man has described how he helped expose “seismic” rape and sexual assault allegations about Mohamed Al Fayed after his fiancee told him she was a victim of the Harrods billionaire.
Keaton Stone spent years speaking to women around the world, gathering a “damning” dossier of evidence.
He took that to the BBC in 2023 and helped to make the documentary, Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods.
His now wife, Sophia Stone, had been a personal assistant to the businessman after joining Harrods at 19.
Mrs Stone revealed to her husband in 2018 that she had been groomed, sexually assaulted, and almost raped by Al Fayed.
It emerged as he helped rewrite his wife’s CV. After realising that she had worked for Al Fayed, he put it at the top of her resume.
“Harrods to me, I guess we all thought it was this amazing, prestigious store, so I made a huge deal of that,” Mr Stone said.
“When I finally presented that to her thinking she’s going to be absolutely made up with this – it wasn’t the reaction I expected.
“She absolutely just completely broke down crying, shaking, [saying] ‘why have you got his name on there, get him off, get him off’. This horrible visceral upset distraught reaction.
“So that’s when I knew something’s not right here.”
Al Fayed who died aged 94 in 2023, took over the luxury department store in 1985 and sold it in 2010.
Her description of what happened became the catalyst for a six-year-long journey, ultimately resulting in an expose and the documentary.
Mr Stone, who acted as a consultant for the programme, said: “It was very hard for her to tell me. She still finds it so traumatic.”
She told her fiance that Al Fayed tried to rape her several times while she worked for the firm between 1988 and 1991, almost succeeding on one occasion.
There was also “constant harassment and sexual assault” both in the office and everywhere she went with him, including private helicopters and planes.
Mr Stone added: “I’m keen to make the point: Why didn’t these people leave? They couldn’t, they could not leave, they were threatened, they were silenced, they were terrified.
“That’s why [Sophia] wasn’t able to leave.
“It wasn’t a lucky escape, because what happened happened and he’s traumatised her to this day.”
He added that Al Fayed’s actions against the numerous women who have shared their experiences were “absolutely beyond despicable and depraved”.
Sophia Stone said Al Fayed attempted to rape her on several occasions, both in the UK and abroad.
The couple have moved around, living in Birmingham and London before finally settling in the small town of Lichfield, in Staffordshire.
It was there, first in a spare room, then in an office in their garden that Mr Stone began piecing the evidence together.
He said his wife had buried what had happened to her for a long time, which he says is the case for many survivors around the world.
“The majority of them have deeply, deeply put this in a box and buried it away,” he said.
When he contacted former employees of Al Fayed, he said: “I can’t tell you how many times I had someone say something like, ‘you’ve no idea how long I’ve waited for this email or this text. I’ve waited 25 years for someone to ask me about this.’
“Things had tried to come out about him before, [but] they never landed and he was able to swat them away.”
Since the documentary, the team have been “inundated” with more survivors coming forward, and Mr Stone believes there are now more than 100 of them.
Harrods’ current owners said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations and that Al Fayed’s victims had been failed.
Al Fayed died in August 2023.
“He knew something was happening, he was aware,” Mr Stone said.
“The overwhelming desire was to expose him and to hold him to account whilst he was alive.
“We desperately didn’t want another [Jimmy] Savile situation – we wanted him in jail.
“How big it was meant that it took as long as it did, and sadly he did die, but it’s still of overwhelming importance to the survivors that the world knows the truth about him.”
Mr Stone also hopes the revelations will help ensure those who facilitated Al Fayed’s actions will be held to account.
In a statement last month, Harrods acknowledged that at the time of Al Fayed’s ownership it had “failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise”.
It added “the Harrods of today is a very different organisation”.
“Sophia is tired, she’s had to live with this all day every day for six years,” he said.
“She is deeply still traumatised and she just wants it over with. She wants to put it behind her, but she’s adamant and so staunch in her belief that this should be exposed.
“It needs to be, for the greater good and for all the other survivors – it must continue to be investigated and exposed.”
