Camilla, who has championed the fight against domestic abuse as one of her main advocacy efforts, recently shared a personal encounter from her teenage years in the 1960s when she had to fend off an attacker on a train.
“I was engrossed in my book when this young man attacked me, but I fought back,” Camilla recounted to the BBC.
“I remember disembarking the train, and my mother noticed my disheveled hair and missing coat button, asking what had happened,” she added.
Camilla admitted that although the incident left her “furious,” she remained silent about it for many years until hearing other women’s similar experiences encouraged her to speak out.
She expressed that her decision to share her story stemmed from the fact that domestic violence has been a “taboo subject” for so long, causing many to remain unaware of its severity.
“I realized that if I have even a small platform to make a difference, I should use it,” she explained.
“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.
