Name: 'It's on a scale of Epstein': Ex-Harrods employee on alleged Mohamed Al Fayed abuse | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-12-25T17:04:54.000Z
Duration: 8 min 5 s
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I've been talking to a woman who says she was sexually assaulted and sexually assaulted by the late Harrod's boss, Mohamed Al Fayed, when she worked at the famous store.

Carrie Lozell has waived her right to anonymity to speak publicly and for the first time in 30 years, about what she says she was subjected to.

And it began when she had a summer job at Harrods while a student.

So unfortunately, within a matter of weeks, I was having some unwanted sexual advances from the chairman of Harrods.

He started to pay almost daily attention to me on the shop floor.

And then he started to touch me in ways that I didn't want to be touched and also give me gifts and give me money and gifts, which I didn't want either, but

I think we've used the word grooming now.

He started to groom me and make me feel like I was slightly special and this was unwanted.

When you were subject to this inappropriate touching, were you able to say anything?

He very strongly said, do not tell anybody.

But he framed it as though you're special.

It has a lot of impact on a very young, naive girl who's starting life, who's starting a career.

He picked particularly vulnerable girls to do this to and then made it absolutely imperative that we didn't say a word about it.

And including my parents or Anybody else, in 1996, you graduated and you went back to Harrods.

You were offered a job in the art department, which you accepted.

He had an enormous amount of power over people.

And of course, then I got this amazing job, which was absolutely, for me, a dream job, drawing, creating the visuals, drawing all the images for the Christmas events and all the seasons.

You had experienced what you say was this unwanted touching, this inappropriate behavior, sexual assault, we call it.

And this is what's so probably difficult for people to understand.

But at the time, first of all, very young, very naive.

It was a very different era 30 years ago.

It was arranged by Harrods that you would go to Harley street for a private medical.

So a medical, all expenses paid by the company, seems like actually a wonderful thing.

But when you get there and you find it's pretty much all of it centred on gynecological testing, which is not appropriate and not necessary and not needed, it's too late to change your mind, it's too late to question.

So that kind of testing, that kind of medical examination of a young woman, which I'd never experienced before, was not acceptable.

And then you say you were called to Muhammad Al Fayed's office after you'd had that appointment.

Well, first of all, he sat me on his knee, which again, is not acceptable.

He went through my medical records, which is not acceptable.

And he read through them and he quite explicitly told me I was not allowed to have a boyfriend.

The only boyfriend I was allowed to have was him.

All with a smile and a wink and a slight unnerving humor, which you can't.

Some women have talked about the fact that Al Fayed brought them to his apartment where they say they were sexually assaulted and in some cases raped.

And you have your own experience of being summoned there or invited there.

Yes, but he said he had special late night work for me.

I was the only person who could complete this job, this task.

I was not to tell anybody else in the office.

I was familiar, I felt comfortable there.

I was taken up to the top floor, which I had never been to.

And it wasn't until that point that the panic started to set in, because it wasn't an office, it was an apartment.

Gold and pink and very beautiful, very sort of in a very lavish way.

And I walked into a room that overlooks Hyde park with a huge semicircular window, two glass champagne, music, a whole range of gifts on a chair, very lavish, very extravagant.

Alfhed approaching me semi naked, coming towards me and realizing that this was really not the situation I wanted to be in.

And I felt completely panicked and completely terrified of what was going to happen next.

Are you okay talking about what happened?

I mean, he did push himself on top of me.

He did, you know, it was far too much for me.

I didn't like anything he was doing to me at all.

Next, I knew that he would quite possibly then attack me because it was.

There's no mobile phones, there's no means of communicating.

I hadn't told my family, I hadn't told my boyfriend, thank goodness.

And I said, I tried to appease him because I knew he was going to possibly get angry.

I said, I can't do this tonight because my father's waiting outside.

And I said, no, I have to go because my father's outside.