London
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Britain’s Queen Camilla has spoken publicly for the first time about how she needed to “fight back” after being assaulted by a stranger on a train when she was a teenager.
“When I was a teenager, I was attacked on a train,” Camilla informed BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program, aired Wednesday. “I’d sort of forgotten about it, but I remember at the time being so angry.”
“(It was) somebody I didn’t know. I was reading my book, and this boy, man, attacked me, and I did fight back,” she mentioned.
After getting off the train, Camilla revealed how her mom had requested why her hair was “standing on end” and why a button was lacking from her coat, pointing to the assault’s bodily nature.
The id of the attacker isn’t recognized, however Camilla mentioned he was “probably not a great deal older than me,” despite the fact that on the time she thought he was an “old man.”
She mentioned the reminiscence of the attack has been “lurking in the back of my brain for a very long time.”
The Queen disclosed the incident in a radio dialogue about violence in opposition to girls, alongside BBC commentator John Hunt, whose spouse, Carol, and two daughters, Louise and Hannah, had been killed by Louise’s ex-partner. The couple’s surviving daughter, Amy, additionally joined the dialogue.
Details of the train attack had been beforehand included in an excerpt from the e-book “Power and the Palace,” launched earlier this 12 months by Valentine Low, a former royal correspondent for The Times of London newspaper.
The e-book included further particulars about the incident, as informed to Low by Guto Harri, who was communications director for former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson throughout his time as Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016.
“She was on a train going to Paddington – she was about 16, 17 – and some guy was moving his hand further and further,” Harri informed Low within the e-book, recounting a narrative Camilla had reportedly informed Johnson at Clarence House.
At that time, Johnson requested what occurred subsequent, Harri informed Low. According to Harri, Camilla replied: “I did what my mother taught me to. I took off my shoe and whacked him in the nuts with the heel.”
“She was self-possessed enough when they arrived at Paddington to jump off the train, find a guy in uniform and say, ‘That man just attacked me’, and he was arrested,” Harri continued.
Buckingham Palace didn’t launch an official assertion on the time of the e-book’s launch.
Camilla, who grew to become Queen in 2022, has made it her mission to lift consciousness about violence in opposition to girls and ladies. Last 12 months, she teamed up with an all-female production crew in a robust documentary during which she vowed to maintain on working to eradicate home abuse.
NCS’s Jack Guy contributed to this report.