Queen Camilla had a heartfelt conversation with a mother whose daughter was tragically murdered by her estranged husband.
The chat was featured in the documentary Her Majesty The Queen: Behind Closed Doors, which aired on Monday night. The show left viewers in tears as Camilla was seen championing the fight against domestic violence.
She met Diana Parkes, the mother of Joanna Simpson who was sadly killed by her ex-husband Robert Brown on October 31, 2010. Brown buried her body in a pre-dug grave in Windsor Great Park in England.
Diana mentioned that it had been eight years since their last meeting, to which Camilla responded with 15 poignant words. She said: “I am honestly never going to forget that meeting. It is engraved in my heart.”
Recalling their first encounter at a SafeLives event, Camilla shared: “I remember seeing you and I thought, ‘Goodness. That’s somebody of my generation.’ I tried to put myself in your shoes. I thought to myself, ‘What if it had been my daughter?'”
“I don’t think I would have been able to sit and be this dignified as you were that day,” she confessed. The Queen also remembered when Hetti Barkworth-Nanton, a close friend of Joanna’s, courageously spoke about her death publicly for the first time.
My reaction I’m afraid was to cry,” Camilla admitted. “I looked around and there was a lot of police and hard-nosed journalists sitting around – there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”
The Monday evening special showcased a 90-minute deep dive into Her Majesty’s year, highlighting her private moments with domestic abuse survivors. Queen Camilla, who has been vocally supporting anti-domestic violence initiatives for more than a decade and became the Patron of SafeLives in 2020, shared her profound dismay at the widespread nature of what she calls a “terrible, very sad, heinous crime.”
In the heartfelt opening commentary, Camilla discussed the importance of public awareness, sharing her initial shock when first learning about the extent of domestic violence: “By scratching the surface, you get a terrible shock. It’s such a terrible, very sad, heinous crime. If we could just get more people discussing it, talking about it.
