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Camilla, who has long championed the fight against domestic abuse, recently opened up about a harrowing experience from her youth. As a teenager during the 1960s, she faced a disturbing encounter on a train when a man assaulted her. This moment, though kept private for many years, has fueled her passion for raising awareness on the issue.
In an interview with the BBC, Camilla recounted the unsettling incident. “I was engrossed in my book when suddenly, this young man attacked me, and I instinctively fought back,” she said. The encounter left a lasting impression, evident when she returned home. “I remember my mother looking puzzled, asking why my hair was disheveled and why a button was missing from my coat,” she recalled.
“And I remember getting off the train and my mother looking at me and saying, ‘Why is your hair standing on end?’ and ‘Why is a button missing from your coat?’”
While the attack made her “furious,” Camilla said, she kept it quiet for many years until she heard other women recount their own stories.
She said she decided to speak up because domestic violence has been a “taboo subject” for so long that most people don’t realise how bad the situation is.
“I thought, well, if I’ve got a tiny soapbox to stand on, I’d like to stand on it,” she said.
“And there’s not a lot I can do except talk to people and get people together.”
The comments came in a group interview with the surviving family members of Louise Hunt, 25, her sister Hannah, 28, and their mother Carol, 61, who were murdered by Louise’s ex-partner at their home outside London in July 2024.
The queen praised former racing commentator John Hunt and his daughter Amy for their work fighting domestic violence.
“Wherever your family is now, they’d be so proud of you both,” Camilla said.
“And they must be, from above, smiling down on you and thinking, ‘My goodness me, what a wonderful, wonderful father, husband, sister’. They’d just be so proud of you both.”
While this is the first time Camilla has spoken publicly about the attack she experienced, it was previously recounted in the book “Power and the Palace,” published earlier this year by Valentine Low, a former royal correspondent for the Times of London.
That account was based on what the queen told former Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London.
According to Low’s book, Camilla was on a train to London’s Paddington Station when the man sitting next to her reached out and attempted to touch her.
She fought him off by removing her shoe and bashing him in the groin. When she got to Paddington she found a man in uniform and told him what had happened, and the man was arrested.