
Former Fulham Women captain Ronnie Gibbons alleges she was “groped” on two events by the soccer membership’s late proprietor Mohamed Al Fayed.
The previous Harrods boss tried to “forcefully” kiss her at his division retailer in 2000, when she was 20, she told The Athletic website.
“Talking my fact and at last telling my story will hopefully assist me heal and be rid of the disgrace, embarrassment and ache I’ve carried for years,” she stated.
Attorneys from the Justice for Harrods Survivors group stated they had been representing 4 former gamers of the membership.
Fulham FC instructed the BBC it was making an attempt to ascertain whether or not anybody on the membership “had been impacted” by Al Fayed.
“The membership is profoundly troubled to study of the experiences instructed at the moment by former Ladies’s Crew captain, Ronnie Gibbons,” Fulham stated.
“She has our deepest empathy and assist.”
Al Fayed owned Fulham between 1997 and 2013.
In 2000, Fulham’s ladies’s group – identified on the time as Fulham Women – turned the primary feminine soccer group in Europe to show skilled.
Gibbons, who was captain on the time, stated she was pushed to Harrods by membership workers. As soon as on the luxurious division retailer, she stated she was left alone with Al Fayed, who was then in his 70s.
“He pulled me in shut and tried to kiss me on the mouth,” she stated of their first assembly.
“He had his arms holding my arms, like at my facet, so I couldn’t push him away or something like that. It was an actual form of management stance, like ‘I’m dominating you’.
“I used to be identical to, ‘What do I do right here?’ I simply felt like an enormous accountability on my shoulders at that time as a result of we’d simply turned skilled.”
Gibbons stated that Al Fayed tried to forcefully kiss her once more: “He even could have caught his tongue on me or one thing. I simply bear in mind feeling sick, simply actually bodily feeling sick, after I left there.”

Later that summer season, she stated a member of workers instructed her she had been summoned to Harrods once more by Al Fayed.
Within the interview with The Athletic, she recalled: “This time he groped me. As he was saying goodbye, he was form of grabbing me, making an attempt to form of maintain on to me and kiss me. He was like, ‘You’re not scared are you? You don’t must be scared, I’m not going to do something like that, you’re very treasured, you’re a really particular woman’.”
Fulham FC instructed the BBC: “We unequivocally condemn all types of abuse. We stay within the course of of building whether or not anybody on the Membership is or would have been impacted by Mohamed Al Fayed in any method as described in current reviews.”
Final week, the Metropolitan Police said it had received 40 new allegations from those that included sexual assault and rape in opposition to Al Fayed.
The allegations comply with a BBC documentary and podcast, containing testimony from former Harrods workers who stated the billionaire sexually assaulted or raped them.
Since the documentary first aired in September, an additional 65 ladies have contacted the BBC saying they had been abused by Al Fayed, with allegations stretching past Harrods and way back to 1977.
‘Additional precautions’
Final month, the previous supervisor of Fulham’s ladies’s group Gaute Haugenes instructed the BBC that further precautions had been put in place to guard feminine gamers from Al Fayed.
Haugenes, who managed the group from 2001 to 2003, stated members of workers turned conscious that the late billionaire “preferred younger, blonde ladies”.
Gibbons was reported to be angered by these feedback.
Chatting with the BBC on Friday, Haugenes, who’s Norwegian, stated he may utterly perceive her frustration.
“All I can say is I’m actually sorry for saying one thing that would have put extra wooden on the fireplace. I truthfully thought we protected the gamers,” he stated.
“I knew that he preferred Ronnie as a result of all the women, they joked about it. However I assumed he was an outdated man, she was a younger girl. I used to be 30 on the time, I didn’t assume individuals his age had been interested by intercourse.
“I might need been naive, it might need been a few of the language boundaries that I didn’t decide up particulars of their joking.”
He added that he had not been conscious she had been instructed to go to Harrods.
Requested whether or not membership workers may have carried out extra, he stated it was troublesome to know what may have been carried out in another way.
“However it’s best to have had a system that picked up issues like that,” he stated. “It was earlier than I used to be a supervisor that she went there.”
He added: “It’s unhappy to listen to she had these form of experiences as an expert participant.”
The CEO of Ladies in Soccer (WIF) instructed the BBC there are “vital challenges” within the feminine soccer surroundings.
“It brings to the fore the prevalence of energy in balances and the danger in direction of ladies within the trade working each on and off the pitch,” Yvonne Harrison stated.
“For gamers it’s actually necessary that they’re protected, they’re safeguarded and that their voices are before everything listened to – and that’s the identical off the pitch as nicely.”
The Justice for Harrods Survivors group stated the abuse Gibbons had endured from Al Fayed was “yet one more horrible instance of the monstrous abuse aided and abetted by the companies he owned”.
They added: “We salute our consumer’s bravery and are proud to advocate for Ronnie and others at Fulham who’re trying to find justice. We are going to do no matter we are able to to carry the lid on abuse, regardless of the place it was perpetrated, or who it was perpetrated by, together with any enablers of Al-Fayed’s abhorrent behaviour.”
A spokesperson for Harrods stated it was “completely appalled” by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Al Fayed.
It stated: “These had been the actions of a person who was intent on abusing his energy wherever he operated and we condemn them within the strongest phrases.
“We additionally acknowledge that in this time his victims had been failed and for this we sincerely apologise.”

