Former Fulham women’s captain Ronnie Gibbons has alleged she was twice sexually assaulted by the club’s late owner Mohamed Al Fayed, who was also the boss of Harrods.
Gibbons, who captained Fulham in the 2000/01 season, said Fayed, chairman of the west London club between 1997 and 2013, assaulted her in an office at the upmarket department store.
The Egyptian billionaire, who died last year aged 94, was chairman of Harrods until 2010 and was one of Britain’s most recognisable businessmen.
But last month the BBC aired a documentary with testimony from multiple former Harrods employees who said Fayed had sexually assaulted or raped them.
Lawyers representing Gibbons told the PA news agency she had waived her anonymity, using an interview with The Athletic to say she felt she could not speak out about the abuse at the time for fear of jeopardising the future of the women’s team.
The 44-year-old said Fayed tried to “forcefully” kiss her at his department store when she was 20 and then “groped” her on her second visit.
“I was used. I just felt a huge responsibility on my shoulders because we’d just turned professional,” she said.
“Everything internally was screaming at me, ‘Ronnie, you need to leave’, but I couldn’t because I would be to blame for all these women losing their jobs and Fulham Ladies going down the pan.
“I couldn’t allow anything to happen to me, but at the same time, I couldn’t just run for the hills, which is what I wanted to do.”
On both occasions she alleges was attacked, Gibbons said she was told she had to go to see Fayed, and was driven from the club’s training ground to Harrods by a member of club staff.
The pretext both times was that Fayed’s children wanted to talk to her about football but The Athletic report said there were no children there.
The Justice For Harrods Survivors group said in a statement: “What former Fulham captain Ronnie Gibbons was forced to endure at the hands of Mohamed Al Fayed is yet another horrible example of the monstrous abuse aided and abetted by the businesses he owned.
“We salute our client’s bravery.”
The BBC reported that the group was representing four former players of the club.
In 2000, Fulham’s women’s team, known then as Fulham Ladies, became the first women’s football team in Europe to turn professional.
A statement from Fulham said: “We unequivocally condemn all forms of abuse. We remain in the process of establishing whether anyone at the club is or would have been impacted by Mohamed Al Fayed in any manner as described in recent reports.”
British police last week said they had recorded 40 new allegations against Fayed since the airing of the BBC documentary.
They were in addition to allegations the force already knew about prior to the BBC’s investigation.
More than 200 women are now in settlement talks with Harrods, according to the store.