Survivor group No One Above has urged the Government to act to ‘deliver justice’ to Al Fayed victims.
Survivors of abuse at the hands of billionaire Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed have called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to intervene after they “lost faith” in the Metropolitan Police’s investigation.
The Met Police accidentally shared the email addresses of more than 140 people who have reported that they were victims of Al Fayed’s crimes.
The force failed to hide recipients’ email addresses when it sent out a monthly update to victims on Tuesday last week, leaving them visible to others on the distribution list.
The Met apologised for the data breach on Saturday, describing it as “human error”.
An advocacy group for survivors of Al Fayed called No One Above has urged the Government to act, saying the Met has “failed to keep survivors safe”.
No One Above said in a statement: “The investigation has inflicted two egregious data breaches on the survivors it exists to protect, delayed answering their questions and dismissed their calls for proper safeguarding of witnesses and evidence.
“We have lost faith in Operation Cornpoppy. The latest safeguarding failure, exposing the identities of 147 victims, is the culmination of a multi-decade history of failure.
“The state cannot use the principle of non-interference in police investigations as a shield for its responsibilities to victims and the public.
“No One Above calls on the Burnham Government to show the resolve its predecessors lacked.
“Prove, now, that the safety of women and girls matters, deliver justice to Fayed victims and end impunity for those who believe themselves above British law.”
The group has called for the National Crime Agency (NCA) to take the lead on the investigation, saying it is better able to be independent and to bring in the “financial and international capabilities a serious organised crime case demands”.
The survivors have also called for confirmation that the investigation “pursues modern slavery lines of inquiry as a primary focus” and parliamentary scrutiny of the investigation.
The group’s fourth request is for a full Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation into past and ongoing Met failures, rather than the current model of IOPC-directed investigations by the Met itself.
The survivors are also requesting a safeguarding risk assessment, which includes conflicts of interests threatening the integrity of evidence and access to vulnerable witnesses.
Finally, the survivors are asking for a statutory public inquiry to “dismantle the institutional architecture of impunity in Britain spanning the litany of failures to hold powerful sex criminals to account”.
The survivors expressed deep concern about the data breach, adding that its leak to the press has drawn “fresh attention to people whose safety should have been prioritised and increasing risk to those individuals”.
The No One Above said: “The risk to survivors is real.
“Addresses already exposed to 150-plus people can be used for phishing, impersonation, identity theft and targeting – the public reporting only sharpens the need to act.”
The Met said the data breach was being investigated “as a matter of priority”.
In a statement, a spokesperson said: “Due to human error, recipients’ email addresses were visible to others on the distribution list.
“The issue was identified quickly and immediate action was taken.
“We understand the impact this may have on victims and sincerely apologise. Everyone affected was contacted directly on the day of the incident.
“The incident is being investigated as a matter of priority, and we are reviewing our processes to help prevent a similar breach from happening again.”
This latest breach came just days after the Met was reprimanded by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on August 5 for “data protection failures”, including disclosing a victim’s new contact details to their alleged stalker.
According to the ICO, the Met’s mitigation steps included introducing “a new behavioural alert tool designed to prompt staff when emails are being sent to multiple external recipients”, yet just days later the data breach regarding the Al Fayed victims’ email addresses took place.
No One Above has asked the Met to confirm what it is doing to contain the data breach, offer identity-theft and dark-web monitoring to everyone whose details were exposed, and to “put survivors’ safety first”.
Meanwhile, the Met is also accused of failing in its legal duty to Al Fayed victims in relation to the national referral mechanism (NRM).
The NRM is the UK’s official framework for identifying victims of modern slavery and certain public bodies, including the police, have a legal obligation to refer all children and consenting adults they have reasonable grounds to believe may be a victim of modern slavery.
All four No One Above members, who have been recognised by the Home Office as victims of modern slavery, told the Press Association that the Met did not offer them a referral when they came forward.
Instead, they self-initiated referrals through an anti-slavery charity called Unseen and received their positive conclusive grounds decisions in recent months.
It it understood the Met believes there is no automatic requirement for them to submit a referral for offences that occurred before the implementation of the NRM in April 2009 and the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but the Home Office views the historical nature of the alleged exploitation as irrelevant for referral purposes.
More than 400 allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against Al Fayed, dating between 1977 and 2014, including sexual assault, rape, sexual exploitation and human trafficking.
The Met are investigating at least 156 victims who contacted them directly, including 21 who came forward before Al Fayed’s death in 2023 at the age of 94.
The investigation, known as Operation Cornpoppy, was launched in November 2024 and is looking at people who may have facilitated or enabled Al Fayed’s crimes
Seven people have been questioned under caution. This includes four women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 80s, and three men, one in his 60s, one in his 80s, and one of unknown age.
The Metropolitan Police and Number 10 have been contacted for comment.
