Australian journalists are increasingly alarmed that Pauline Hanson no longer appears intimidated by them—assuming she ever was. More concerning, however, is the question of why so many Australians have lost faith in journalists.

Concern is mounting across the Fourth Estate after One Nation began excluding certain journalists from its events.

At a press conference at Crown Melbourne last week, reporters from the ABC and The Guardian were told to leave and escorted from the venue by hotel security. The Age has also been refused entry to One Nation events.

Some newsrooms have warned that barring journalists establishes a dangerous precedent in an otherwise healthy democracy. One Nation’s strategy may indeed be misguided. Hanson is certainly capable of facing tough questions, even if she responds in a way that differs from the standard approach of a conventional politician.

If One Nation hopes to replace the Coalition as Labor’s principal alternative, it must accept the greater scrutiny that ambition brings. Yet there is another aspect of the dispute that journalists seem far less willing to examine. The media is calling on Hanson to reflect on her conduct while showing little inclination to do the same itself.

Take the event from which the ABC and The Guardian were excluded. One Nation’s Victorian leader, Warren Pickering, used the occasion to publicly acknowledge that he had taken illegal drugs and had lost his licence several times for drink-driving offences when he was younger.

Regardless of one’s view of Pickering or his disclosures, it is hard to portray a press conference focused on revealing the most humiliating chapters of a politician’s past as an effort to evade scrutiny. The Australian, which first reported the story, was permitted to attend.

The excluded outlets were not prevented from reporting on, investigating or criticising One Nation. They continued to cover the matter extensively. Calling their exclusion “censorship” pushes the term well beyond its proper meaning.

Censorship stops journalists from publishing. It involves the state using its authority to suppress information or punish those who disclose it. Refusing entry to a privately organised media event is something else entirely: it withdraws privileged access, but does not remove press freedom.

Nor should anyone pretend that political parties do not routinely manage media access. Politicians offer exclusives to preferred reporters, leak material to sympathetic outlets and give selected journalists advance notice of announcements. Embargoed briefings, background discussions and carefully timed “drops” are all used to influence coverage. I know because, over the years, I have experienced every one of these tactics.

Reporters who cooperate with the system are rewarded with access. Those who create difficulties may find that calls go unanswered, interviews vanish and stories are handed to rival outlets.

The threat of freezing out journalists has been a feature of politics for decades. Governments are especially well placed to do it because they control such a vast supply of information. They seldom need to impose an official ban; the punishment can be delivered quietly. I have encountered that as well, on several occasions.

The ABC itself has previously characterised political “drops” as a familiar media-management technique—one journalists often accept and even welcome, despite the hidden agendas and conditions that can accompany them.

When the major parties ration information in this manner, it is described as media management. When One Nation does the same thing openly, it is presented as an existential danger to democracy. That is difficult to take seriously.

The major parties use a velvet glove; One Nation uses hotel security guards. In large part, the distinction is simply how discreetly the pressure is applied.

That does not make One Nation’s conduct more or less acceptable. It does, however, expose the media’s reaction as selective and inconsistent.

Some journalists hold an idealised view of the Fourth Estate that no longer reflects the way the industry actually operates.

Thomas Jefferson is frequently cited as a champion of the press. In 1787, he wrote that if forced to choose between “a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government”, he would choose the latter.

It’s a magnificent endorsement of press freedom.

But Jefferson didn’t regard newspapers as inherently virtuous. Twenty years later, after experiencing their excesses, he wrote that ‘nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper’. He understood something that is often lost in the present debate: a free press is essential, but that doesn’t make it infallible.

The modern media bears little resemblance to the institution journalists evoke when defending the sanctity of the Fourth Estate. It is fragmented, financially under pressure and increasingly driven by outrage, clicks and ideological affinities. That’s fine, but it means that the boundaries between reporting, analysis and activism have become blurred.

Social media rewards speed and fury rather than accuracy or proportion. Newsrooms increasingly speak to narrow audiences whose political instincts they already understand. Too many journalists mistake the prevailing opinions inside their own professional and social circles for the settled views of the country, and they couldn’t be more wrong. Especially gallery journalists confined to the Canberra bubble.

Trust in the media has declined accordingly. The 2025 Digital News Report found that only 43 per cent of Australians generally trusted the news. Yet when politicians reject the authority of the media, many journalists respond as though their own conduct couldn’t possibly have contributed to the breakdown.

No Australian political figure has more reason to distrust the press than Pauline Hanson. For three decades, Hanson has faced legitimate and often necessary scrutiny. She’s made offensive remarks, promoted questionable candidates and advanced policies that deserved rigorous examination. But that isn’t the whole story.

She has also been subjected to relentless ridicule, exaggeration, selective reporting and personal contempt. Misquoted and taken out of context. At times, journalists have appeared less interested in understanding her support than in displaying their moral superiority to it.

Her voters have routinely been depicted as ignorant, racist or stupidly incapable of recognising their own interests. Every controversy has been presented as the event that must finally destroy her. The possibility that Hanson might identify genuine community concerns (even when her prescriptions are sometimes flawed) has too often been dismissed without serious examination.

She was even sent to prison for three months before her convictions were quashed. Whatever the media’s role in that saga, Hanson’s suspicion of powerful institutions didn’t emerge from nowhere.

The media has spent so long treating Hanson as beyond the bounds of respectable politics that many of her supporters automatically discount almost anything reported about her now.

Hanson has recognised that she no longer needs the mainstream media as she once did. Social media allows political parties to speak directly to millions of voters. Interviews can be live-streamed, announcements published in full and hostile coverage answered almost instantly.

Yes, that creates genuine dangers. Politicians can evade difficult questions, construct self-serving narratives and communicate inside closed ecosystems wherein they are rarely challenged.

But it also means journalists are no longer indispensable gatekeepers. Access is not an entitlement bestowed by membership of the profession, it has to be justified by the value journalism provides and the trust it earns.

In my view, One Nation should probably lift its bans. A party seeking national power should be prepared to face unfriendly journalists, and Hanson is strong enough to do so. But the media should resist turning this into another sermon about its own democratic virtue.

After three decades of helping create the distrust on which One Nation now thrives, many in the modern media should be willing to answer a few questions themselves.

Wisconsin lawmaker Tom Tiffany has described the terrifying seconds before the small plane carrying him crashed into a lake, recalling how the pilot warned him they were going down and told him to brace.

The Republican congressman and gubernatorial candidate said the four-seat aircraft was approaching Wausau, Wisconsin, on Saturday night when the pilot instructed him to fasten his seat belt tightly.

“As we were making that final turn before we were going to approach for landing, the pilot turned to me and said, ‘Tom, we are going down, pull your seat belt as tight as possible,’” Tiffany told Fox News on Monday night.

“And it was like staring into the abyss. And you don’t know how far down it is.”

Tiffany quickly tightened the belt before the plane plunged into Lake Wausau.

“I pulled that seat belt as tight as I could and it was just a couple seconds later, we hit the water and we hit it hard,” he said.

Despite the force of the impact, the aircraft remained intact and stayed afloat.

“The plane stayed upright, thankfully as a result of the skilled work of the pilot, and we looked at each other and said, ‘Are you okay?’” Tiffany recalled.

As the damaged plane began to sink in the darkness, Tiffany realized that he and the pilot had only a limited amount of time to get out.

“When we were both okay I just said to him, ‘Get this door open,’ because, you know, the door was right there on my side in the copilot’s seat,” he explained.

They managed to open the door, escape the aircraft and swim away from it toward the shoreline.

“We got the door open, got out and the rest from there, we were able to be saved by the local law enforcement as well as the first responders,” Tiffany said.

“I can’t thank them enough for what they did, but it’s by the grace of God that we are here today.”

Tiffany said the events unfolded so quickly that he has found it difficult to reconstruct exactly what happened moment by moment.

“It happened really quickly,” he said. “And we were out of that plane I think really quickly. And, you know, you just try to piece it back together but it just happened so quickly.”

The congressman suffered a gash above his eye that required 12 stitches. The pilot received four stitches.

‘Each of us had very minor injuries. Once again thanks to the grace of God,’ Tiffany said. ‘This is the only injury I have.’

The dramatic account came two days after Tiffany first revealed he had survived the crash while returning home from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner.

He said the four-seat Bonanza lost power as it approached Wausau Downtown Airport, forcing the pilot to attempt an emergency landing on the lake.

‘While returning home from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner tonight, the plane I was traveling in lost power as we approached the Wausau Downtown Airport,’ Tiffany wrote on Facebook after the ordeal.

‘The pilot made an emergency water landing in Lake Wausau. After landing, we called 911,’ Tiffany wrote. ‘As the plane began to submerge, we exited the aircraft and swam to a shallow area, where we waited until emergency responders reached us by boat.’ 

The Marathon County Sheriff’s Office and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources responded to the scene.

Tiffany and the pilot were taken from the water and transported to Aspirus Wausau Hospital for treatment.

The congressman later thanked those involved in the dramatic rescue, saying first responders ‘got us safely off the water and transported us to Aspirus Wausau Hospital, where we received excellent care.’

Exactly what caused the aircraft to lose power remains under investigation.

Tiffany, a Republican, has represented Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District since 2020, winning the seat previously held by Sean Duffy, who resigned from Congress in 2019 and now serves as President Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary.

Tiffany is now the Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor and is set to face Democrat David Crowley in November.

A Marquette Law School poll published at the end of August showed the two tied at 44 percent of support each among respondents who were registered voters. 12 percent of registered voter respondents to the poll were undecided.

Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district has been represented by Republicans for the last 15 years.

A 13-year-old girl who went missing in Manchester has been found “safe and well” eight days later.

Lillia, from Bolton, was reported missing by her family on September 11 after she was last seen at a bus station in the city.

Her mother made an emotional plea for her daughter to come home after the teenager disappeared for more than a week.

Greater Manchester Police has now confirmed that Lillia has been found and is with officers.

The force said she was located in Manchester city centre in a safe and well condition, and that her family had been notified.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said: “Thank you to everyone who shared our missing appeal for 13-year-old Lillia, who has been missing since Friday, September 11, 2026.

“We can confirm that she has been found safe and well in the city centre.

“She is currently with our officers, and her next of kin have been informed of this update.

“We will release more information in due course.”

Earlier this week, Lillia’s mother Jessica fought back tears as she sat beside Chief Superintendent Helen Critchley, who read a heartfelt statement on her behalf.

“Lill, I love you so, so much. My heart is breaking without you here,” she said.

“I need to know that you are safe. We all need you back home safe and well.”

In an update issued on Saturday, GMP said Lillia was last seen at Manchester Piccadilly bus station at 10.36am on Monday, September 14.

CCTV images from the station showed her wearing a black zip-up hoodie, dark trousers and carrying a black Nike backpack.

Police believe she travelled on the number 36 bus from Salford before getting off at the station.

Lillia was described as white and slim, standing approximately 5ft 5in tall, with light brown hair and glasses.

Previously the last sighting they had of the teenager was at 1.50pm on Saturday at the Trafford Centre shopping complex – where she boarded the 247 bus towards Altrincham. At that time, she was wearing light blue baggy jeans.

Officers scouring CCTV footage identified a further sighting of Lillia at the McDonald’s in Manchester city centre’s Market Street on Sunday at about 8.20pm.

Lillia’s aunt Nina posted on social media as part of the family’s appeal, saying she has no phone on her, very little money and no supplies other than her rucksack.

She added: ‘Lillia comes from a very loving family with a mum who does an amazing job and I couldn’t ask for a better mum for lil.

‘I was with Lillia a few weeks ago and asked her how school and life was, she showed no concerns and said everything was good, I gave her a hug and told her to keep being good for her mam.

‘As a family we have no idea what has made Lillia become untraceable.’

She said the family are having sleepless nights and described the ‘heartbreak’ of Lillia’s mother as ‘horrific’.

‘If anyone is with Lillia please tell her that she isn’t in trouble and once home everything will be ok,’ Nina added.

On Saturday, a large advertising board featuring pictures of Lillia was stationed in Piccadilly Gardens.

Chief Superintendent Critchley, of GMP, previously said: ‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank the public and the media for your continued support as we continue our inquiries to locate Lillia.

‘Our thoughts continue to be with her family, and friends, I would like to thank her mum for her support with our appeals over the past few days. She has shown incredible strength throughout, and we are doing all we can to bring her daughter back home to her.

‘Officers are making every effort to locate Lillia, and our team have been working through hours of CCTV footage and exploring every avenue to try and find her.

‘I can now confirm that our last known current sighting was of Lillia at Manchester Piccadilly bus station at 10.36am on the morning on Monday 14 September.

‘We can also share that she exited the number 36 bus at Piccadilly, with her boarding it in Salford.

‘That bus service travels from Bolton through Salford and into Manchester city centre.

‘If anyone has any information regarding Lillia’s whereabouts or movements from this bus – or you were on the bus at the time she was also on there or when she got on in Salford or off in Piccadilly – please contact us via 101 or the Major Incident Portal below.

‘We are also still keen to hear from anyone who may have been in Piccadilly Gardens on Sunday 13 September around 8.20pm, or saw her in McDonald’s at that time.

‘Monday 14 September is the last confirmed sighting of Lillia and our investigation currently covers the whole of Greater Manchester with officers across the force being asked to support our enquiries. We are also mindful that Lillia could have travelled outside of the Manchester area and are keeping an open mind regarding this possibility.’

This is a breaking story. More to follow. 

Dear Vanessa,

My son is 29, works full time and earns a decent income, yet I’ve realised I’m still covering a surprising amount of his expenses.

Some of these arrangements happened so gradually that I barely noticed. I own a business, and his phone and internet services have always been charged to the company, so I never stopped to question them. I also continue to pay for his health insurance and several subscriptions.

Each bill seems fairly manageable on its own, but I recently calculated the total and wondered why I was still paying everything for a 29-year-old man who is financially secure.

Family holidays are another issue. I generally pay for him to join us because, if I’m honest, I doubt he’d come if he had to cover the cost himself. Having all my children together is important to me, so I have continued picking up the bill.

His brother and sister fund their own trips, and they’ve begun asking why he receives different treatment. I can see why they feel frustrated.

I’ve tried discussing money with him before, but he quickly becomes defensive. His view seems to be that because I can afford to help, there is no reason for me to stop.

I know I have created this situation. I’ve never clearly told him that he is an adult and should now be responsible for these costs himself.

But I’m getting older, and I have started asking myself how long this can continue.

How can I stop financially supporting my adult child after so many years without making him resent me or triggering a major family conflict?

I feel embarrassed to admit it, but I’m also afraid that ending this support—especially paying for holidays—could mean seeing less of him.

Rachel

Vanessa’s response:

Rachel, I suspect the phone account is not the real source of your anxiety. What you are truly afraid of losing is your relationship with your son.

That makes this far more emotional than simply cancelling a few recurring payments.

You haven’t done anything wrong by allowing the arrangement to continue. You were helping your son out of love, and until recently you had not felt a compelling reason to change the pattern.

But that reason has now arrived.

Your other children have noticed the imbalance, you are beginning to challenge it yourself, and most importantly, you are recognising that fear—not simply generosity—is keeping you financially responsible for your adult son’s life.

That’s the bit I would pay attention to.

Are you paying because you want to, or because you’re scared not to?

There is nothing wrong with spending money on adult children if you can afford it and genuinely want to.

You can take your whole family on holiday. You can shout everyone dinner. You can give your children money. It’s your money and your choice.

But there’s an important difference between saying, ‘I’d love to take my children away and I’m happy to pay,’ and thinking, ‘If I don’t pay for my son, he won’t come.’

One is a gift. The other starts to feel like a price you’re paying for the relationship.

And no parent should have to keep paying a 29-year-old’s bills because they’re frightened he’ll withdraw his company if they stop.

Don’t make it a fight

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I wouldn’t suddenly cancel everything and wait for him to discover his phone has been cut off.

I’d have one calm conversation.

Tell him that you’ve realised a number of his expenses are still sitting on your accounts simply because that’s how things have always been. He’s working and independent now, so you’re going to start transferring them across to him.

Give him a reasonable date.

You don’t need a long explanation about retirement, fairness or how much you’ve already spent on him. And I wouldn’t make his siblings part of the argument. This is between you and him.

Something as simple as: ‘I’ve realised I’m still paying your phone, internet, health insurance and subscriptions. They’ve just carried on from when you were younger. You’re earning now, so from January I’m going to hand those over to you.’

Then stop talking.

He may not like it. That’s very different from you doing something wrong.

The holidays are a separate decision

If having everyone together brings you enormous joy and you can comfortably afford to pay, there is nothing inherently wrong with doing that.

But be truthful with yourself about why you’re paying.

If you’re paying for all your children because you want to give them a family holiday, that’s generous.

If your other children pay while you quietly cover your son’s costs because otherwise he won’t spend time with you, I’d question whether that’s a pattern you want to keep reinforcing.

Your other children may also be seeing something you haven’t wanted to look at: the child who takes responsibility for themselves can sometimes end up receiving less, while the child who pushes back keeps getting more.

Over many years, that can create resentment.

There isn’t a magic birthday when parents should stop helping their children.

The better question is: is my help helping them become more independent, or making it easier for them not to be?

Your son has a job. He can apparently afford these expenses. What he doesn’t currently have is any reason to take them over because you’re paying them.

So give him one.

And Rachel, if your relationship with your son changes because you stop paying his phone bill, then the phone bill was never the real problem.

You may have to tolerate some annoyance while the dynamic changes. Don’t mistake his displeasure for a family crisis.

You can love your son, be generous with him and enjoy spoiling him occasionally without remaining financially responsible for him.

In fact, at 29, handing him his own bills may be one of the more loving things you can do.

All the best,

Vanessa

You can subscribe to Vanessa’s free newsletter here. 

Joanna Brittan recalls watching the English countryside blur beyond the window of the limousine.

She was too stunned to absorb the scenery. Earlier that day, the 25-year-old had been abruptly dismissed from her role as translator and personal assistant to a senior United Arab Emirates diplomat.

While clearing out her desk, Joanna said she was reminded by her superiors of the strict confidentiality terms in her contract. She was then escorted out onto the street in Knightsbridge.

A limousine was waiting nearby, and she was waved inside. Behind the wheel was a chauffeur; in the vehicle sat the man who had overseen her dismissal, her employer, diplomat Ahmed Obaidly.

Joanna later recalled: ‘I’m crying. I come out of the office. Obaidly’s waiting with his chauffeur. I’m told to get in the limo. The chauffeur locks the doors. I can’t open them. And we start driving out of London.’

Obaidly remained silent. As the journey continued, Joanna said her distress gave way to a growing sense of fear.

The car eventually entered the lengthy driveway of a country estate. Joanna says she noticed armed men dressed in combat clothing concealed among the trees and bushes.

At the entrance to the house, a deeply tanned, weathered man was waiting for them.

Joanna recognised him immediately. She had met him before: Mohamed Al-Fayed.

The year was 1990, and Fayed, then 61, was a prominent public figure. The owner of Harrods, he moved in influential circles and was connected to celebrities, members of the royal family and Joanna’s boss, Obaidly.

Joanna had previously visited Fayed’s offices with Obaidly, but she could not understand why they had been taken to the businessman’s Surrey estate in Oxted.

According to Joanna’s account, the purpose of the visit was for one or both men to sexually abuse her.

The wider significance of what happened became clear to her only decades later, in the late 2010s, after a conversation with a woman whose name had become known around the world: Virginia Giuffre.

Giuffre, who died in 2025, became one of the most prominent figures to expose the scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and exploitation.

As one of Epstein’s best-known accusers, she helped reveal allegations of an international network that supplied young women and girls to him and other powerful associates.

Joanna happened to be in contact with Giuffre shortly before the now notorious BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew in November 2019, in which his relationship with the convicted sex offender was examined.

Prince Andrew has consistently denied wrongdoing and has never been convicted of offences connected with Epstein or Giuffre.

By then 54, Joanna reached out to Giuffre on social media after hearing her speak repeatedly about being groomed while she was a vulnerable young woman.

As the women exchanged messages online, they shared their stories. Virginia praised Joanna as ‘a beautiful soul’, telling her that she was ‘here for you any time’.

Virginia helped Joanna see the wider picture of what happened to her that day in Fayed’s country mansion. There, Joanna believes she was drugged over lunch by Obaidly and Fayed.

A complete void exists in her mind, so blank she believes it can only have been drug-induced.

She believes she was then sexually abused by one or both men. She has no idea how long she was kept on the estate for, or indeed any recollection of the immediate aftermath at all.

But while Joanna called it ‘abuse’, Virginia used a different word to describe what happened to her.

As I reveal in the Daily Mail’s new blockbuster podcast Al-Fayed: Who Looked Away?, Virginia helped Joanna understand that, like her, she had been a victim of ‘trafficking’ – a crime considered more serious than sexual abuse alone – and encouraged her to seek justice.

In the podcast I document how significant evidence points to Fayed being no less than the British Epstein, in both the scale and systematic nature of his abuse.

Like Epstein, he permitted rich and powerful men to use his businesses, his luxurious homes and even his superyachts as hunting grounds for young women, who were trafficked across international borders to be abused.

It’s no secret there were many female victims of Fayed, who died in 2023 aged 94: it’s been said there are 500 from Harrods alone, aged 15 and up.

Earlier this week, a law firm representing more than 275 survivors warned that compensation claims could top £150 million, more than double the amount the department store has set aside.

I believe 500 victims is the bare minimum. I worked on Harrods’ shop floor myself when I was 19, in 2007, and the female workforce was extremely transient. Employees came and went at pace.

With this in mind, and considering Fayed’s international reach, I believe it’s no exaggeration to put his total number of victims at double that estimate or more.

Meanwhile, American law enforcement agencies estimate the number of Epstein victims as around 1,200. It’s no surprise then that there’s more than one link between the two men.

According to the Epstein files, he regularly used private jet terminals owned by Fayed, under the company name Harrods Aviation.

Private airport terminals avoid the need for standard immigration checks, making it easier to move women between countries for sexual exploitation.

One survivor, using the name Natalie, told an interviewer earlier this year she was sent to Fayed by Epstein, in the summer of 1997.

He told her to travel to Fayed’s yacht, the Jonikal, off St Tropez and that meeting Fayed was a ‘good opportunity’. Like many other women, she was assaulted on that yacht.

This, of course, was the summer when Princess Diana holidayed on the yacht with her boyfriend, Fayed’s son Dodi, shortly before their deaths, though Natalie did not recall seeing the couple.

Epstein, who had a Parisian apartment, also swam in the pool at the Ritz Paris, which Fayed bought in 1979 and is still owned by the Al-Fayed family trust. French newspapers have reported Epstein was often accompanied there by ‘jeunes femmes’.

The biggest similarity, though, is that their crimes were not closely guarded secrets. People knew.

And yet Epstein’s debauched lifestyle continued for decades, until he was eventually arrested in July 2019. He was found dead in his prison cell the next month.

Fayed, too, was never brought to justice, with the full scale of his crimes only exposed after his death. Today, many people, rightly or wrongly, have been publicly implicated in his case.

Those named include Kelly Walker-Duncalf, who worked for 15 years as a recruiter at Harrods.

In a 2025 TV documentary, former staff referred to her as ‘Al-Fayed’s Fixer’, recruiting young women on his behalf. At least three survivors claimed she had personally introduced them to Fayed.

When the documentary crew approached Ms Walker-Duncalf, she issued a statement through her lawyer, saying she wasn’t aware of Fayed’s crimes and didn’t facilitate them.

Michael Ward became managing director of Harrods in 2005 and worked for years under Fayed.

Today, Ward has apologised on behalf of Harrods to Fayed’s victims but denies any knowledge of abuse and has said no formal complaints were ever brought to him.

There is no direct evidence Ward personally knew about Fayed’s crimes. He remains the managing director of Harrods, which was sold by Fayed in 2010.

Dr Ann Coxon, meanwhile, is one of the doctors accused of carrying out sexual health checks on Harrods employees and passing confidential results to Fayed. Dr Coxon has categorically denied allegations and remains a doctor in good standing.

Dr Coxon, Ms Walker-Duncalf and Mr Ward have never been charged with any criminal offences. But there must be others who know more about Fayed’s modus operandi.

The story of Carrie, who was 20 when she got a summer job at Harrods in 1994 working in ladies’ fashion, illustrates the layers of complicity surrounding Fayed’s actions.

After just two weeks Carrie was taken to Fayed’s office by his security team to meet him. He became fixated by her.

She was made to get a sexual examination at a private medical facility and told me ‘the next day I was called into [Fayed’s] office, [and] sat on his knee. He looked through my medical reports and told me I was dirty, and that I was on the Pill… I shouldn’t be having any sex and he was my boyfriend.’

One of the sites of abuse repeatedly mentioned by survivors is a building Fayed owned on Park Lane, comprising offices where Harrods staff would occasionally work and his personal apartments.

Carrie was sent there and told me: ‘I thought I was being taken to [do] some extra work. He told me to meet him on this top floor and I was escorted upstairs.

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‘As I went through these doors, they locked behind you. I remember slightly panicking. There were two glasses of champagne on the table and lots of extravagant gifts – Chanel No5 perfume and outfits.

‘And he emerges in a satin dressing gown that’s open. He’s completely naked underneath… I remember my heart racing because I realised I was not in a situation I could have any control over.’

Fayed began assaulting Carrie. She only escaped by lying, telling him her father was waiting for her outside.

Then there were the many times police did not act against him, despite reports of his crimes.

Our podcast uncovered shocking examples of this, including what happened to Joanna. Her full story makes particularly uncomfortable reading.

Educated in British private schools, Joanna’s parents were based in the Middle East, where her father worked as a pilot.

In 1990 she went to work for the Al Nahyan family in London. The royal dynasty which controls Abu Dhabi is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

She was assigned to Obaidly – a tall, well-dressed, well connected diplomat – in offices right behind Harrods.

‘I thought, how lucky am I? I’ve fallen on my feet,’ Joanna told me softly.

But shortly after starting work, her office manager told her she’d be getting a sexual health check.

‘She made it very clear I had no choice if I wanted to keep my job,’ Joanna recalls.

Joanna was alone in London. She also wanted to keep her job, so reluctantly acquiesced. ‘It was literally a gynae exam, bloods, [checking for] STDs,’ she recalls.

Meanwhile Obaidly, some 40 years Joanna’s senior, constantly propositioned her, making lewd comments. Then he took her to the south of France to inspect properties owned by the royal families located in millionaire enclaves.

She told me: ‘I remember just feeling like nobody knows I’m here. There’s no mobile phones. You know, it’s very frightening.’

After a meeting with the mayor of Cannes, Joanna was taken to a penthouse Obaidly owned. She remembers him seizing her and trying to rape her but she managed to fight him off.

Still not knowing what to do, Joanna continued with the trip. When they returned to London, he raped her multiple times at his house.

There’s no suggestion any members of the Abu Dhabi royal family knew about or condoned Obaidly’s abuse of Joanna. But his association with them meant there was a huge power imbalance.

Not long after he raped her, Obaidly took Joanna to Harrods – to the chairman’s suite, where she met Fayed.

‘I remember being there with Obaidly and Fayed and having tea and coffee in the Arabic fashion with very delicate china and a cake stand with little petit fours.

‘They were talking Arabic and discussing me because they were looking at me.

‘I felt, looking back, that I was being paraded as a trophy.’

It was soon after that Joanna was sacked by Obaidly and taken to Fayed’s country estate.

They had lunch – she remembers Fayed shaving truffle onto a pasta dish which, he told her, was ‘pound for pound more valuable than gold’. She was taken to meet his children.

Then, he told her she was going to live there – as nanny to his children. It was presented to her as a fait accompli, something the two men had decided between them.

She remembers laughing it off: ‘I’m thinking to myself, “Why don’t you have Norland nannies who are trained?”‘

Her laughter enraged both Obaidly and Fayed, to the extent that both men began shouting in her face.

But after that, she remembers nothing. Not what happened next, or how she got away. Her amnesia could be drug-induced – though this kind of memory gap is also common in survivors of traumatic abuse.

She never saw either man again and buried her trauma, before leaving London in 1999 to start a family and move on with her life.

Then, in 2017 she saw a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary which interviewed several women who said they’d been assaulted by Fayed.

Bravely, Joanna contacted her local police station who passed her to the Metropolitan Police. They told her no further action would be taken. Obaidly had died in 2015 and, they said, there was insufficient evidence to do anything about Fayed.

However, they reassured Joanna they would keep her report on file. If another woman came forward, they might have a case. It was essentially ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ – which they never did.

But, as we reveal in the podcast, another of Fayed’s victims had also seen Dispatches and had also contacted police not long after Joanna to report her assault.

She was also told nothing could be done but ‘as soon as another woman comes forward, we’ll let you know’. She, too, heard nothing. How many women were told the same?

After Fayed’s death, the Met confirmed they received allegations against him from 21 women between 2005 and 2023. They said they presented material to the Crown Prosecution Service on five different occasions. Yet Fayed was never charged.

Was this just a failure to connect the dots? Or something more?

Certainly, Fayed worked hard to shut down allegations of his abuse. One man assisted in particular – Harrods’ head of security, former policeman John Macnamara.

He had spent 28 years with the Met, achieving the rank of detective chief superintendent.

By 1994 he was the linchpin of Fayed’s ‘security operations’.

Multiple survivors have claimed Macnamara personally threatened them to stop them talking about their abuse. His team is also alleged to have bugged phones, intercepted calls and even broken into houses.

I spoke to women who were still afraid to name Macnamara in public, even though he died in 2015.

Throughout his time as Fayed’s head of security, Macnamara retained links to the police.

He invited officers for drinks at the store and allegedly distributed Harrods hampers to those who were friendly.

He also reportedly continued to attend the Christmas party at his former station.

In 1994, when a former nanny made an accusation of sexual assault against Fayed, she was suddenly arrested on charges of theft. It was alleged Macnamara had arranged trumped-up charges to intimidate her. In the end she was not charged and later received £12,000 compensation from Fayed.

All these stories stink of corruption. But they wouldn’t be widely known until after Fayed’s death, because through the 90s and 2000s he consistently intimidated and silenced journalists, with the help of his expensive lawyers.

So much has still yet to be explored. Reporting has focused on Harrods but it’s alleged that women were also procured through the Ritz Paris, and reportedly at Fulham Football Club, which he bought in 1997.

Fayed also bought a school – West Heath in Sevenoaks, Kent, where Princess Diana once attended. Last year a book alleged Fayed used it to procure underage girls.

Harrods’ immediate response to the allegations made after Fayed’s death was to say ‘these were the actions of an individual’. But from what we now know, that individual must have been enabled by others.

The victims of Fayed are ordinary women, with jobs and families. They are fighting on, trying to get the Government to acknowledge the depth of Fayed’s depraved regime and how they were trafficked, just as Virginia Giuffre was.

A few – including Joanna Brittan – have finally been recognised as trafficking victims by the Home Office.

But in an Alice In Wonderland-style farce, despite having identified them as victims of trafficking, police say they cannot yet reclassify Fayed’s crimes as trafficking, rather than ‘just’ sexual assault.

This is more than just semantics: with a trafficking categorisation comes more resources, more legal firepower and stronger penalties for those who are complicit. Fayed’s victims deserve this justice.

Episodes 1 and 2 of Al-Fayed: Who Looked Away? are available everywhere, or become a member of The Crime Desk to listen to the entire series immediately along with our other award-winning true crime podcasts. Visit thecrimedesk.com

As told to Maureen Brookbanks