Shortly after Samantha started working in the Harrods toy department, she was spotted by Al Fayed, who started inviting her up to his office.
We can read what happened next in Samantha’s own words because, dissatisfied with the police response, she told her story in 1998 to the News of the World. It echoes many of the accounts that have been told since the BBC documentary Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods first revealed allegations of rape in September.
The article says Al Fayed gave Samantha £50 notes and offered her more highly paid jobs. But at their second meeting, he told her she needed to have a medical and urged her to wash herself with Dettol. Al Fayed then sexually assaulted her.
“I was terrified,” Samantha’s quote reads. “And then I rushed out of his office. I ran to the toilets and burst into tears.”
When Samantha told her supervisor what had happened, she said he just sighed and said: “Another one.”
She said she was then escorted to a room, where Al Fayed was brought in to face her. He began aggressively berating her and fired her on the spot, she said.
“She came out of that feeling quite threatened,” Emma recalls, adding that Al Fayed had told Samantha: “You will not tell anyone about this, because we know where you live. We know your family.”