Campaigner and broadcaster Nicola Thorp launches a major new podcast investigation, Al-Fayed: Who Looked Away?, on Saturday 19 September, opening with four episodes.
Thorp worked on the Harrods shop floor from 2007 and is going back inside the story nearly two decades later. Rather than treating the abuse as, in Harrods’ past words, “the actions of an individual,” the series examines the people and systems around Mohamed Al-Fayed — the recruiters, managers, security staff, doctors and HR teams that survivors say allowed a pattern of abuse to continue for decades.
Across months of interviews, Thorp draws out similarities in survivors’ accounts of recruitment, grooming, surveillance and intimidation spanning Harrods, private apartments, country estates and overseas locations. More than 400 allegations of rape, sexual assault, exploitation and trafficking have now been made against Al-Fayed, whose alleged abuse spans from 1977 onwards. He died in 2023 without facing criminal charges.
A live investigation, the series will add episodes as new evidence emerges. It is Thorp’s second series for The Crime Desk, a DMG Podcasts true-crime imprint, following her investigation into the disappearance of Charlene Downes. The first episodes are at podfollow.com/al-fayed.
