Five women say they were raped by former Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed when they worked at the luxury London department store.

The BBC has heard testimony from more than 20 female ex-employees who say the billionaire, who died last year aged 94, sexually assaulted or raped them.

The documentary and podcast - Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods - gathered evidence that, during Fayed’s ownership, Harrods not only failed to intervene, but helped cover up abuse allegations.

Harrods’ current owners said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations and that his victims had been failed - for which the store sincerely apologised.

“The spider’s web of corruption and abuse in this company was unbelievable and very dark,” says barrister Bruce Drummond, from a legal team representing a number of the women.

Since this article was first published, more former Harrods employees have contacted the BBC saying Mohammed Al Fayed assaulted them.

Warning: this story contains details some may find distressing.

The incidents took place in London, Paris, St Tropez and Abu Dhabi.

“I made it obvious that I didn't want that to happen. I did not give consent. I just wanted it to be over,” says one of the women, who says Fayed raped her at his Park Lane apartment.

Another woman says she was a teenager when he raped her at the Mayfair address.

“Mohamed Al Fayed was a monster, a sexual predator with no moral compass whatsoever,” she says, adding that all the staff at Harrods were his “playthings”.

“We were all so scared. He actively cultivated fear. If he said ‘jump’ employees would ask ‘how high’.”

Fayed faced sexual assault claims while he was alive, but these allegations are of unprecedented scale and seriousness. The BBC believes many more women may have been assaulted.

'Fayed was vile'

Fayed's entrepreneurial career began on the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, where he hawked fizzy drinks to passers-by. But it was his marriage to the sister of a millionaire Saudi arms dealer that helped him forge new connections and build a business empire.

He moved to the UK in 1974 and was already a well-known public figure when he took over Harrods in 1985. In the 1990s and 2000s, he would regularly appear as a guest on prime-time TV chat and entertainment shows.

Meanwhile, Fayed - whose son Dodi was killed in a car crash alongside Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 - has become known to a new generation through the two most recent Netflix series of The Crown.

But the women we have spoken to say his portrayal as pleasant and gregarious was far from the truth.

“He was vile,” says one of the women, Sophia, who worked as his personal assistant from 1988 to 1991. She says he tried to rape her more than once.

“That makes me angry, people shouldn't remember him like that. It's not how he was.”

Some of the women waived, or partially waived, their right to anonymity to be filmed - and the BBC agreed not to use surnames. Others chose to remain anonymous. Put together, their testimonies reveal a pattern of predatory behaviour and sexual abuse by Fayed.

The Harrods owner would regularly tour the department store's vast sales floors and identify young female assistants he found attractive, who would then be promoted to work in his offices upstairs - former staff, male and female, told us.

The assaults would be carried out in Harrods’ offices, in Fayed's London apartment, or on foreign trips - often in Paris at the Ritz hotel, which he also owned, or his nearby Villa Windsor property.

At Harrods, other former staff members told us it was clear what was happening.

“We all watched each other walk through that door thinking, ‘you poor girl, it's you today’ and feeling utterly powerless to stop it,” Alice, not her real name, says.

'He raped me'

Rachel, not her real name, worked as a personal assistant in Harrods in the 1990s.

One night after work, she says she was called to his luxury apartment, in a large block on Park Lane overlooking London's Hyde Park. The building was protected by security staff and had an on-site office staffed by Harrods employees.

Rachel says Fayed asked her to sit on his bed and then put his hand on her leg, making it clear what he wanted.

“I remember feeling his body on me, the weight of him. Just hearing him make these noises. And… just going somewhere else in my head.

“He raped me.”

The BBC has spoken to 13 women who say Fayed sexually assaulted them at 60 Park Lane. Four of them, including Rachel, say they were raped.

Sophia, who says she was sexually assaulted, described the whole situation as an inescapable nightmare.

“I couldn't leave. I didn’t have a [family] home to go back to, I had to pay rent,” she says. “I knew I had to go through this and I didn’t want to. It was horrible and my head was scrambled.”

Gemma, who worked as one of Fayed’s personal assistants between 2007-09, says his behaviour became more frightening during work trips abroad.

She says it culminated in her being raped at Villa Windsor in Paris's Bois de Boulogne - a former home, post-abdication, of King Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson.

Gemma says she woke up startled in her bedroom. Fayed was next to her bed wearing just a silk dressing gown. He then tried to get into bed with her.

“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.”

She says after Fayed raped her she cried, while he got up and told her aggressively to wash herself with Dettol.

“Obviously he wanted me to erase any trace of him being anywhere near me,” she explains.

Eight other women have also told us they were sexually assaulted by Fayed at his properties in Paris. Five women described the assaults as an attempted rape.