Queen Camilla speaks publicly for first time about train attack as teenager

By Billy Stockwell, CNN

London (CNN) — Britain’s Queen Camilla has spoken publicly for the first time about how she had 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 told 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 said.

After getting off the train, Camilla revealed how her mother had asked why her hair was “standing on end” and why a button was missing from her coat, pointing to the assault’s physical nature.

The identity of the attacker is not known, but Camilla said he was “probably not a great deal older than me,” even though at the time she thought he was an “old man.”

She said the memory 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 discussion about violence against women, alongside BBC commentator John Hunt, whose wife, Carol, and two daughters, Louise and Hannah, were killed by Louise’s ex-partner. The couple’s surviving daughter, Amy, also joined the discussion.

Details of the train attack were previously included in an excerpt from the book “Power and the Palace,” released earlier this year by Valentine Low, a former royal correspondent for The Times of London newspaper.

The book included additional details about the incident, as told to Low by Guto Harri, who was communications director for former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during 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 told Low in the book, recounting a story Camilla had reportedly told Johnson at Clarence House.

At that point, Johnson asked what happened next, Harri told 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 did not release an official statement at the time of the book’s release.

Camilla, who became Queen in 2022, has made it her mission to raise awareness about violence against women and girls. Last year, she teamed up with an all-female production crew in a powerful documentary in which she vowed to keep on working to eradicate domestic abuse.

CNN’s Jack Guy contributed to this report.

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