Even after Diana and Dodi’s deaths, Al Fayed stored raping women like me

For the past week the spotlight in the Mohamed Al Fayed scandal has been on the women who claim they were assaulted and raped by him while employed in ­London. Now, the focus is turning to Paris.

Kristina Svensson, who worked at the tycoon’s ­prestigious hotel the Ritz, will be the first ­victim to file a complaint in France. She was hired to be Al Fayed’s ­Executive Assistant at the Paris Ritz in June 1998 – only nine months after Princess Diana died, alongside her lover Al Fayed’s son Dodi, in a car crash. The couple had spent their last hours dining together at the Ritz.

Yet, telling her full story for the first time, Kristina reveals how although Al Fayed was devastated by the loss of his son, his grief didn’t stop his ‘violent’ and ­‘perverted’ attacks.

‘He was raping and assaulting young women and girls even in his darkest hour. All he could think about was sex,’ Kristina tells me today. ‘He was an absolute pervert, committing criminal acts against women on a regular basis.’

Now a French lawyer is calling for victims abused by Al Fayed at the Paris Ritz, his Paris house, at his property in St Tropez, as well as on his yacht, to come forward.

Anne-Claire Le Jeune is ­preparing to ask the Paris prosecution service to open a preliminary investigation into Al Fayed’s activities in France along with possible co-conspirators, enablers and other perpetrators who are still alive.

‘We need to know if there were people working with Al Fayed in France who knew about the abuses and kept silent,’ she told the Mail. ‘It is important to have a full investigation.’

More than 150 victims have so far come forward in the UK, ­telling shocking stories of abuse and rape – and Kristina’s story has chilling similarities.

Of Swedish-American heritage, she was 30, blonde and blue-eyed, when hired to work at the Paris Ritz by the President of the hotel.

For the first few weeks she did not meet Al Fayed himself – but a large part of her job involved processing information related to Diana and Dodi’s death, fielding calls from investigators, lawyers, journalists and even psychics.

Living across from Pont de l’Alma, where the tragic accident took place, she remembers hearing the crash and subsequent police sirens in August 1997.

‘I felt it was a real honour to support the people trying to get to the bottom of what happened,’ she says of her job at the Ritz. ‘Obviously, I had a lot of sympathy for Mohamed.’

She found it puzzling, however, that there was no training or explanation of her duties.

 Occasionally she ensured Al Fayed’s various houses were ready for him to stay in or booked hotels in other destinations such as Miami. ‘He would take over half a floor of a hotel and send his security out a week before to fit the rooms with cameras and microphones.’

After two months she was ­summoned to London to meet her boss.

‘He was quite distant, quietly observing me,’ she recalls. ‘He didn’t want to know anything about me, only what I looked like.’

It was a 15-minute meeting, and then Al Fayed handed Kristina a wad of money. ‘He said, “treat yourself to something downstairs.”

‘I’d worked with high-profile celebrities in the film industry before, but I’d never been in a ­situation like this.

‘I was starting work for this very famous man, but I came away still not knowing what the job expectations were.’

Kristina says that later that same day she was sent for a ­medical examination, which she believes was carried out by the late in-house Harrods doctor, Wendy Snell.

Snell along with a number of other doctors, male and female, carried out invasive internal examinations, including a smear test and sexual health screening, on almost all of the women

Al Fayed chose to work closely to him. The results were always sent directly to Al Fayed. Kristina did not receive hers.

She says Al Fayed demonstrated an open disdain for the Ritz, which he believed did not compare in importance to ­Harrods.

‘He would later say to me, on several occasions, “Why do you work in that dump when you could work as a director at ­Harrods and be my girlfriend?” ’

Eventually, Al Fayed came over to Paris with two assistants. ‘I’ve never forgotten how the younger one, in her early 20s, looked like she was going to cry the whole time,’ says Kristina.

‘Al Fayed had his own office suite at the Ritz Paris tucked far away from everyone else. If anything happened in there, no one would hear anything. The Ritz was crawling with security. At any given moment, there would be Saudi Arabian royalty, endless celebrities, the world’s most important billionaires.’

Kristina will never ­forget the first time she was on her own with Al Fayed in this office.

‘He leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, French style, and then slid down to my lips and flipped his tongue into my mouth.

‘I jerked my head away to the side. I didn’t understand what was happening.’

After that, ‘the abuse ramped up very quickly and I really thought it would end in rape’.

‘Every time I walked into his office, he would squeeze my breasts and make a honking sound like they were a car horn. It was very painful. He would open his hands wide to hold my entire breast and dig the ends of his fingers into my skin.

‘I would hold a legal pad over my chest every time I had to see him. I was constantly devising new strategies to pre-empt his groping.’

Then, one day: ‘I was sitting in an armchair opposite Al Fayed’s desk, discussing some minor details when, suddenly, he stood up, walked over to me and wedged himself between my legs, simultaneously grabbing my head and pushing it on his genitals. The arms of the chair were so high, I couldn’t get up. I froze.’

She says that happened three or four more times.

‘I soon learned that I should never sit in an armchair when I was with him and so I would stand behind the chairs in his office, which made him angry.’ Al Fayed would continue to assault her, however. ‘As I was squirming away from him, he’d put his hand under my skirt and try and get inside my underwear.’

Like many of the women who have come forward, she wouldn’t dare confront him about his behaviour. ‘I’d say sweetly, “the phone is ringing, I’ll be right back”. I wouldn’t go back and then he’d get mad and find another way to get to me.’

 Everyone had their place within the hierarchy, she says. ‘It was like a mafia or a cult. There were a lot of “Ghislaine Maxwells” – his female enablers. Four women who I worked closely with, bullied me and psychologically broke me down to keep me in line. They were rewarded with above-average pay and many perks.

‘If I cried, which was pretty much every day once the abuse started, they would say, “You’re so unprofessional, you’re such a baby. You don’t deserve to be here.”

‘There was a culture of omerta, don’t say anything.

‘I was isolated and warned constantly by hotel employees that there are microphones and cameras everywhere. I knew I was being recorded every moment.

‘Rule was by divide and conquer. We couldn’t communicate with each other in any amicable way, as Al Fayed knew we would talk about him. Everything was tightly controlled. Al Fayed insisted we wear dresses or skirts and a blazer. Stockings were compulsory regardless of how hot it was. Hair and make-up had to be perfect.’

Kristina describes how there was no camaraderie between the women in the office, which was separated from the rest of the hotel by a big wooden door.

‘No one was allowed through unless you worked there.

‘On the other side of that door and through the hotel lobby were the blue collar workers, talented and compassionate people paid basic wages.’

Kristina says that it was only because of their kindness that she survived her two-year ordeal.

She also believes the only reason she was spared rape is because she looked so much like Al Fayed’s Finnish wife Heini. ‘Maybe that was disconcerting for him.

‘But almost all the contact I had with him was sexual. Working in those offices was like being in a cage. I felt like a prisoner, like a hunted animal.

‘I just needed to get through two years, so I’d got enough time under my belt to get a meaningful reference and move on,’ she says.

‘Every time he summoned me to his office, I’d hope I’d get some work and that he’d got the message I wasn’t interested but he didn’t play by the rules, he took whatever he wanted.

‘The women I worked with would tell me ­others were being raped and ­sexually assaulted.’

Every time Al Fayed sexually assaulted her, says Kristina, he would throw a wad of money at her or push it down her shirt.

‘I’d have to pick it off the floor. It was abusive, it messes up your mind so much. He’d bring me gifts including ­bottles of Chanel No 5 from Harrods. He once gave me a pendant necklace with a man and woman having sex.

‘We were working at this beautiful and iconic French palace, but we lived in a state of fear.’

Why didn’t she complain to someone, or go to the police?

‘I was scared for my safety. There was no one I could complain to. Each time, after he assaulted me, I’d go to my office and cry… I was throwing up nearly every day.’

It was about survival, she says. ‘This was no different from a domestic violence situation. It felt impossible to get out. I feared what he might do to me.’

Indeed, she described his behaviour as ‘coercively controlling’.

‘At that point, I was having twice-weekly sessions with a ­psychiatrist and was on heavy medication. Nothing helped.

‘He was a predator. During my whole time at the Ritz, I never saw him work,’ she says.

‘Everything I experienced there was sexual harassment or sexual assault.’

Kristina also had to join Al Fayed at his various homes in France, often with other female employees.

She was sent to Villa Windsor, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s ­former home in Bois de Boulogne, which he’d restored to its former glory, and to St Tropez. She says it was common ­knowledge he would go into the bedrooms of the women he took with him.

‘When I arrived for the first time at his house in St Tropez, I was told discreetly by an older member of housekeeping who looked out for us that he had keys to every room. Every night I would put furniture against the door.

‘I hated those trips. It was like being part of a harem. We would sit around like Barbie dolls, waiting for him to pick one of us up and throw us down on the floor when he was done with us. It didn’t take me long to work out that all the women who worked for him were interchangeable.’

Kristina dreaded breakfast in particular. ‘There would be a giant table filled with food and we were not allowed to talk unless he asked you a question. It was torturous.

‘He’d force us to eat food. He’d tell us to eat an egg, and we’d eat an egg. We couldn’t leave the table until he dismissed us.’

By April 2000, Kristina had reached breaking point. She made a plan to gently extricate herself ‘without ruffling any feathers’.

‘I asked the President to negotiate my departure. I said that I was finding the work stressful and that it was clear members of my team didn’t want me there.

‘Instead, I was sent on vacation for three weeks to see if I felt better on my return. I came back and I said it is time that I go. I said, “you know how challenging it is to work for Mr Al Fayed.” I was trying to be discreet about the abuse.’

Kristina walked out and, as she left the Ritz for the last time, she recalls the gentle compassion of concierge staff towards her. ‘Everyone knew what was going on.’

Within two days, she received a letter saying she was fired for gross misconduct – another common tactic reported by women who claim they were abused by Al Fayed. ‘I was devastated,’ says Kristina. ‘I’d stuck it out for nothing.’

Diagnosed with PTSD, she suffered night terrors for five years.

‘The experience left me with a permanent fear of men and of male bosses and female colleagues.

‘If you fear your bosses and colleagues every day for two years, how do you get over it? I knew I had no recourse, it eats you from the inside. I signed a contract to be an executive assistant, not to provide sexual services.

‘He stole things from all of us without our consent.’

Today, the Ritz in Paris is under new management and none of those whom Kristina believes ­enabled or conspired with Al Fayed are still working there.

A spokesperson for the hotel said: ‘The Ritz Paris strongly condemns any form of behaviour that does not align with the ­values of the establishment.

‘The hotel upholds the highest standards of professionalism and has a steadfast commitment to fostering an environment where employees and guests are treated with respect and integrity.

‘The safety and well-being of our employees and guests are our absolute priority.’

Lawyer Anne-Claire Le Jeune says she is looking into the possibility of suing Al Fayed’s heirs in France, and will be consulting with the UK-based legal team representing the women – at least 37 of them – making rape and sexual assault allegations against Al Fayed in London.

Kristina will be the first victim to file a complaint in France.

Today she has twin daughters, now aged 18. ‘Ever since they were little, I’d be terrified that one day they’d be sexually assaulted,’ she says. ‘My hyper-vigilance has affected my daughters a lot because I’m so full of fear for them all the time. I’m coming forward not just for me, but for them.’

She adds: ‘I was brainwashed by the cult at the Ritz under Al Fayed’s regime. I’ve been walking around with this shadow hanging over me for 25 years.

‘Everyone who supported Al Fayed should be afraid right now. Lots of people encouraged and enabled this behaviour. If you stayed silent out of support for him, then you are culpable too.’