Former soccer player and Fulham women's team captain Ronnie Gibbons claims she was sexually assaulted by late owner of the London club Mohammed Al Fayed.
Now 44, Gibbons captained the women's team in the 2000/01 season and Al Fayed was in charge of the club from 1997 to 2013. She claims the businessman assaulted her in the office of the Harrods department store he owns in Knightsbridge.
The lawyers who represent the athlete claim to the PA agency that she has given up her anonymity and decided to give an interview to The Athletic website. In the interview, she stated that at the time she did not have the option to speak for fear that she could jeopardize the future of the entire women's team and fearing that because of a possible scandal, Al Fayed could stop funding the team.
"I was used. But I was afraid that everything might go wrong, because we had just become professionals. Previously, girls worked and played or studied at universities and played. Everything inside me was screaming, "Ronnie, you have to go," but I couldn't because I would be responsible for all these women losing their jobs and Fulham Ladies closing down. We are not a men's team after all.
"I couldn't let something happen to me, but at the same time I couldn't be to blame for the closing of the team. And I just wanted to run away," the former defender told The Athletic website.
In both cases when she was attacked, the scenario was the same, she claims. An employee of Al Fayed's company used to pick her up by car from the training base. The pretext was that the children of the businessman's family wanted to talk to her about football.
But not only she speaks in this direction. There is an organization set up called "Justice for Harrods Survivors" who support her. We applaud her courage in standing up to such a form of violence and are proud that she is part of us. What the former footballer has been forced to endure is yet another horrific example of monstrous violence aided and abetted by the companies he owned, their official statement said.
From the Fulham club, quite as expected, they explained that they are checking whether there have been such and other better cases, but also that they do not support such a practice.