When Power Is Untouchable: The Legal Abyss Facing Harrods Survivors
- Isabella
- Nov 25
- 5 min read
Based on Isabella’s article “When Power is Untouchable: the legal abyss facing Harrods survivors” in Sussex ByLines.
If you’re reading this, chances are you already know what it feels like to come up against power — and to realise that the systems meant to protect you were never built for people like us.
We’re told that “no one is above the law.” But for survivors connected to Mohamed Fayed’s Harrods empire, that phrase has taken on a very different meaning. Because when the people who harmed us are rich, well-connected, or politically useful, justice doesn’t just fail — it disappears.
Many of us first spoke out about the abuse we experienced under Fayed’s control while he was still alive. Some spoke to the media, some to the police, and some quietly in therapy rooms or to each other.
Over time, more and more women came forward — hundreds of us — describing the same patterns: being promised opportunity, groomed, controlled, watched, and coerced.
The locations were always the same: Harrods. The Ritz. Private planes. Yachts. Properties that shifted survivors like pieces on a board.
Today, both Mohamed and Salah Fayed are dead. But many who enabled them are not. And Harrods — the company at the centre of this network — is still very much alive: still trading, still prestigious, still untouched.
Same company. Different owners. No accountability.
When Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund bought Harrods in 2010, they didn’t acquire a “new” company. Legally, it’s the same entity that existed under Fayed — the same one that profited from our exploitation. The ownership changed. The accountability didn’t.
What we’ve learned is that in Britain, justice is political. Qatari investment now runs through almost every level of the UK economy: property, banking, transport, retail — over £40 billion of it. Harrods is part of that power structure.
So when survivors start asking questions — about trafficking, about corporate responsibility, about who looked away — those questions quickly become inconvenient. They make powerful people uncomfortable.
And that’s when the silence closes in again.
A year after our stories resurfaced on television, there are still no criminal charges, no recognition of trafficking, and no accessible route to civil justice.
What does justice even mean when the system is designed to keep it out of reach?
Let’s be honest: for most survivors, the civil courts are not an option. To take on a billionaire’s estate or a powerful corporation, you need money, legal insurance, and emotional reserves no one should have to muster.
If you lose, you could be bankrupted by their legal costs. Even if you win, you risk being punished for trying. Even survivors with strong evidence are pushed toward low settlements, because refusing could destroy them financially.
And there’s something even more broken: there is no specific tort for trafficking in the UK. You can’t even sue for what was actually done to you. Instead, you have to rely on claims like assault or negligence, which cannot capture the scale of organised abuse many endured.
It’s not that the system doesn’t work. It’s that it was never designed to work for us.
About the Harrods Redress Scheme
When Harrods launched its so-called “independent redress scheme,” it sounded like progress — like someone might finally be listening.
But when you look closer, it becomes clear the scheme is structured to protect the institution, not the public. It is administered by people linked to the organisation itself. There is no independent investigation, no public accountability, and no transparency about decision-making.
Survivors who participate must waive their right to future legal action. Those who don’t participate are left with no real alternative.
That isn’t meaningful choice. It’s limitation.
Many survivors entered the scheme for completely valid reasons — exhaustion, financial pressure, safety, closure, or simple survival. Those decisions deserve respect.
Around 100 women have gone through the scheme. Over 300 have declined. Both paths reflect the same truth: survivors deserve options that don’t punish us either way.
This isn’t about money — it’s about truth.
We want to know how this happened inside one of the most famous institutions in Britain — and why no one stopped it. We want disclosure, acknowledgment, and reform. We want to ensure no one else suffers this again.
By coming forward, by speaking, by submitting evidence — in whatever way each survivor is able — we are refusing to let the truth be buried.
The Police Response
The Metropolitan Police have taken 147 survivor statements and reviewed over 50,000 pages of evidence. But they are investigating only five individuals. They still haven’t confirmed whether they are treating the case as trafficking.
That is not a minor detail. It’s the difference between being recognised as a victim of serious organised crime or being categorised under “historic sexual offences.”
Under international law — specifically ECAT — UK police are legally obliged to identify trafficking indicators, regardless of when the abuse occurred.
When the police refuse to name trafficking, it isn’t just bureaucratic. It’s a betrayal.
France is currently investigating aggravated trafficking at the Ritz Paris — the same network, the same era, the same patterns.
Britain’s silence is no longer defensible.
Three barriers, one pattern
Each barrier — the courts, the redress scheme, the police — is part of a wider structure. A system that protects money, not people. Power, not truth.
If survivors cannot afford to go to court, if “redress” is structured as corporate PR, if police will not name the crime — then where does justice exist?
The UK once claimed global leadership on modern slavery. But GRETA’s reports have repeatedly criticised Britain for failing to identify victims, particularly in cases involving domestic or elite abuse.
The Harrods case proves them right.
Our work
Our survivor collective, No One Above (NOA), has submitted evidence to multiple government inquiries, including:
Our asks are simple:
Real costs protection, so survivors aren’t risking everything by seeking justice
Affordable legal insurance, so cases can be brought safely
Recognition of historic trafficking, as required under international law
Independent, abuser-funded redress, not corporate-managed schemes.
To Other Survivors
If you’re reading this because you’ve been affected — by Harrods or any institution that chose silence over safety — I want you to know this:
You are not imagining how hard it is. The system is designed to exhaust you, to make you doubt yourself, to suggest your story is too “complicated” or too “old” to matter.
It’s not.
Whatever path you’ve taken — speaking out, entering a scheme, submitting evidence, staying anonymous — every act of survival counts. Every voice adds weight. Every refusal to be silent makes the truth harder to ignore.
We were once told to accept what happened and move on. Now, collectively, we are saying something else entirely:
We won’t move on until there is justice.
Because when hundreds of women come forward with consistent accounts, and the law still refuses to name what happened as trafficking, the question isn’t whether trafficking occurred.
The question is whether Britain still believes in justice at all.
*Isabella is a pseudonym. She is a Harrods survivor and a founder member of No One Above (NOA), a survivor-led collective fighting for justice and accountability.