The luxurious lairs the place Mohamed Al Fayed ‘raped his younger victims’

The lavish mansion where one of Mohamed Al Fayed’s personal assistants was allegedly raped has a 94-year history and a long connection with the Royal Family.

Villa Windsor in Paris was constructed in 1929 and it became a much-loved home for King Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson in the decades after his abdication.

The property was later taken on by Harrods owner Al Fayed in 1986 and he had wanted it to be a home for his son, Princess Diana‘s boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed.

The property in the Boulogne woods with 1.5 hectares of gardens has seen a range of famous visitors such as King Charles III and Queen Elizabeth II, singer Cole Porter, actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich, and tycoon Aristotle Onassis.

But today, a shocking hidden secret about Villa Windsor was revealed after one of Al Fayed’s personal assistants, named ‘Gemma’, claimed she was raped there in 2009.

Speaking about the incident, Gemma told BBC News that she woke up in her bedroom at the property to find Al Fayed next to her in bed, wearing just a silk dressing gown – and he then tried to get into bed with her.

She added: ‘I told him, ‘no, I don’t want you to’. And he proceeded to just keep trying to get in the bed, at which point he was kind of on top of me and [I] really couldn’t move anywhere. I was kind of face down on the bed and he just pressed himself on me.’

Gemma said he directed her to clean herself afterwards, adding: ‘Looking back now I’m older, more mature, I realise that that was probably to cover up anything, any kind of evidence, anything that would have left his trace on me.’

She said she felt ‘terrified’ afterwards, adding: ‘In Paris, there were security guards patrolling the house, there were security guards outside the house, we were locked in a gated property, we’d been escorted there that day by the police, so I felt like I couldn’t even go to the police, even if I could make my way out of the property.

‘I couldn’t even contemplate leaving the country because he had my passport, so my only way to leave was with him back on that private jet back to London.’

The home, which was portrayed in Netflix‘s The Crown, was designed by architect Roger Bouvard as a summer home for urban planner Georges-Eugéne Haussmann.

Initially known as Château Le Bois and then by its address of 4 Route du Champ d’Éntraînement, the home was sequestered by the French government in 1944.

General Charles de Gaulle and his family took up residence for two years until 1946, before it was leased to Duke and Duchess of Windsor by the City of Paris in 1953.

Edward and Simpson oversaw a major refurbishment of the 14-bedroom mansion, where they remained until their deaths in 1972 and 1986 respectively.

Just days before Edward’s death, his niece Queen Elizabeth II visited him there. Her son Prince Charles had also previously paid a visit, in a moment which featured in series three of The Crown.

In 1986, the mansion was leased by the city to Al Fayed for 50 years with a rent of Fr‎1million per year, with a stipulation that the Harrods owner spent Fr‎30million on renovations.

In The Crown season five, the character of Al Fayed talked about restoring the villa and insisted that ‘no matter the cost, it will be my gift to the British Royal Family’.

He also gave it the name of ‘Villa Windsor’. However, no episodes of The Crown were actually filmed at the property.

Al Fayed finished a £10million restoration in 1990 and had hoped to turn the property into a museum dedicated to Edward and Simpson.

He told People at the time: ‘It’s like a mausoleum. It sometimes gives you the creeps- both of them having died here. But it’s still a happy place, a great fantasy which I love to live in.’ 

In 2020 Al Fayed – father of Princess Diana’s boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed – decided to give the property back to the city and then died in August last year aged 94.

And it has since undergone a multimillion-euro renovation after the city signed it over to a charitable heritage foundation.

Albéric de Montgolfier, president of the Mansart Foundation charity, revealed last year that the city had given his organisation a 32-year lease on the property.

Speaking about when De Gaulle was in residence, Mr Montgolfier said: ‘It was a very interesting period because lots of France‘s laws were signed there, including the one giving French women the right to vote.’

And looking at its more recent history, he added: ‘Al Fayed originally intended it as a home for his son Dodi and had planned an engagement lunch there for Dodi and Diana.’

But the lunch had been scheduled for the day after Dodi and the Princess were killed in the city in August 1997, and therefore never took place.

Mr Montgolfier also said: ‘It is a luxury house with a big, big dining room, a beautiful hall, a library and one and a half hectares of gardens. It is just ten minutes from the Place de l’Étoile in a really great location.’

The property was originally set to open to the public for the first time this summer to coincide with the Paris Olympics, but this has now been pushed back to next year.

Major works include installing a new heating system and features to meet modern-day health and safety standards – along with a café, museum and small restaurant. Admission is set to be free.

Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods airs on BBC Two at 9pm tonight and is available on BBC iPlayer. The accompanying five-part season of the World of Secrets podcast, from the BBC World Service, is on BBC Sounds