Mohammed Al Fayed.

I tend not to engage with you as a rule BlueBelle as your comments often run to the personal.All I will say to you is that you have just written a lie i.e. ‘just because you do not believe it’ when nowhere have I stated that I don’t believe it.
My point, made several times as it’s never picked up on, is that girls working in Harrods did not have to put up with sexual assault and could have left the store threats or no.In actual fact I think the evidence is that threats were issued if girls complained about Fayed outside the store, not just that they left off working there.

This is all very one sided on here today .
Could that be that 99% of us believe these girls Oreo and are very aware that people like AlFayad, Saville, Weinstein etc etc did exist (and still do although it’s not so easy to get away with now)and that the majority of young woman did not have the ability to deal with threats against them or their families, hopefully more do now.
However we still have the Andrew Tates of the world trafficking and raping and his crimes weren’t thirty orforty years ago
Just because you don’t believe it does not mean that it didn’t happen
190 complaints to date

And here we are, all these years later, with people questioning why girls did not speak out, against a powerful man who also was their boss, much older, and very powerful.

Yes, Miss Adventure, women did complain about the injustices suffered by their sex. The war made some difference when women enjoyed the independence of the workplace, but it was swiftly removed during the Peace.. It was when the daughters of those frustrated mothers hit the workplace in the 1960s with a good education behind them that the fight began for change.

Just checked and rape in marriage was made a criminal offence in Oct 1991.

Rape in marriage was not illegal until relatively recently.
The 80 s maybe… not sure exactly but it wasn’t long ago.

Most violence by men in a marriage was seen as domestic and no one else’s business.

Oh it most certainly did.
I doubt there was any type of abuse that didn't go on in that home, but again, he had been to war, so it was expected that they tolerated it.

There's no doubt he was very, very mentally ill.

Scars you I'm afraid. Your poor mum.

Before that time, the things that my own mum witnessed and endured in her childhoodwere horrific, too.

That's how it was then. Around 1954.

That's just terrible, Kate1949.
It's almost an extra abuse by those who we were told to turn to, if ever we had a problem.

MissA How right you are about the police back then. I was about 5, my sister 8 when we walked to the police station and said to the sergeant 'Our dad keeps hitting our mom''. He said 'Go home girls there's nothing we can do.'

Women’s worst enemies are other women who don’t empathise as a refusal to do so gives them a perceived advantage. Aunt Lydia is a personification of this phenomenon.

See also the women who say they hate female bosses, and the ones who ‘get on better with men’. A failure to acknowledge that women have baked-in issues (whether we as individuals have all experienced them or not) is such a narrow-minded outlook. I didn’t experience ABC so it can’t have happened and if it did it can only have happened because the women it happened to were less clever/modest/feisty/assertive/biddable than me.

I'm reading the thread, too, about someone feeling tired all the time.
It is, again, more of a problem for women to be taken seriously with medical problems.

They tend to be sent on their merry way far more often than a man would be, if he had the same issues.

I had an inkling that Al Fayed was able to buy his way into, or out of, any situation, years ago, when I read the book by Diana's bodyguard.

Any male teachers trying it on by being handsy would soon be out on their ear now.As they would in most workplaces.
The guy who assaulted me back in the 80’s when I was about 19 and working as a temp had obvs got away with it until then.My slap to his face in front of office workers did him no end of good I bet.I actually didn’t stop to think but just did it as a reaction to what he did.

The filthy pig. Money and power. Those who knew about it all at the time should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. I have to watch the programme now.

Still, many sexual assault cases, to this day, are unreported, since women still feel that they will be judged as "asking for it", even if those words aren't openly used.

I agree MissA, especially to working class women in the past.

Yes, I realise the timeline is out, but women always put up with huge inequalities without question.

We had a couple of male teachers at school that were a bit "handy", and would never have thought of making a fuss, complaining, let alone slapping them.

My mother suffered from horrible sexual abuse in her workplace.
It affected her very badly and contributed to having a disappointing sex life .
I also was nearly raped at work and not on one occasion .
I was more fortunate than her ,because I was able to deal with it .
But in both our cases, reporting it meant jeopardising our careers and the perpetrators knew it .
That's how these evil men get away with it .
Now things are more open and I hope that it's going to be a thing of the past .

You wouldn’t have had to give up work in 1997 if married but the levels of accepted sexual violence was rife ime including at work

Unnecessary personal examinations were normal as well

The police didn't involve themselves in a "domestic".

My neighbours husband took his belt to their little son, and flayed some of his skin off.

Her call to the police resulted in them telling her she should be more understanding, as her husband got bad headaches!!!

I think women/girls in those days were very different than they are today.

Did any of them protest and take it further when they had to give up work once married?

Did any police women protest about a handbag bring part of their uniform?

Has anyone seen families where the males are dished up bigger portions of dinner, or where dad had "his" chair, that nobody else must sit in?

flappergirl

Oreo, it's almost impossible to believe isn't it. A rich and powerful man who was known to be involved in illegal activities, against whom there is credible evidence of sexual predation and who was a key figure in the impenetrable culture of patriarchy, could possibly be guilty.

Like Jimmy Saville and Ralph Harris, people behind the scenes had known for a long time what sort of man he was and it had been intimated for years. But it went against their own interests to blow the whistle or intervene. These are hardly shock horror revelations or the scoop of the century.

As I said in my previous post, regardless of whether or not the women involved should have found other jobs, it cannot possibly excuse or diminish his crimes. I think you are too fixated on that issue. If my opinion is of any value, I agree with you to some extent. However, it does not detract from the fact that men in power have exercised unfettered control over those beneath them (aided and abetted by other men in power) for far too long.

I have already said he was obvs an odious man, even for the times he was an awful person, that isn’t in doubt.I know that you agree to some extent with my point of the women involved saying no to whatever he proposed to them.I think it’s an important point for others to realise you don’t have to go along with something you know is wrong by your employer.
There’s an interesting piece on the online news and on tv about a member of Harrods management team ( young woman at the time) who said that he would go around the store looking at pretty staff members and say ‘I want that one in my office’.She would then warn the girl in no uncertain terms that he would offer her more money, promise Park Lane parties and be showered with gifts but that she would then have to sleep with certain men.
I would have collected my bag and coat and left right there and then.
She says he was always asking her to work more closely with him near his office but she told him no, she was happy where she was and he didn’t molest her.
He was undoubtedly a sex pest of the first order I have no doubt.
I just challenge the posts on here who think girls had no choice and couldn’t possibly leave the store.