Just In: Queen Camilla speaks out for the first time about being groped on a train
Just In: Queen Camilla speaks out for the first time about being groped on a train
Queen Camilla has spoken out about fighting back after a man tried to grope her on a train to Paddington when she was a teenager in the 1960s. Speaking on a special Radio 4 Today programme, the Queen opened up about the incident for the first time.
The Queen was talking to John and his daughter, Amy Hunt, during a radio special with former Prime Minister Theresa May and Emma Barnett. Queen Camilla recalled being on her way to meet her mum when “this boy, man, attacked me”, adding “I did fight back.
She added: “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?’ I was physically attacked but I remember anger, and I was so furious about it.”
She was recorded in conversation with John Hunt, the racing commentator, and Amy, his surviving daughter, whose family were murdered in a crossbow and knife attack in July last year.
The Queen said the memory of her own assault had been “lurking in the back of my brain for a very long time”. She added, “When the subject of domestic abuse came up, and suddenly you hear a story like John and Amy’s, it’s something that I feel very strongly about.”
The Queen invited Mr Hunt and his daughter, as well as Baroness May to Clarence House as part of the UN International 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, an initiative she supports.
The conversation was broadcast on New Year’s Eve in a special edition of the Today programme that was guest edited by Baroness May, who has also long campaigned against domestic abuse.
After hearing the Queen’s story, Amy told her: “Thank you for sharing that, Your Majesty. It takes a lot to share these things because every woman has a story.
It is understood that Camilla opened about her experience to explain how women suffering groping or sexual assaults can lead to wider issues.
The revelation that the Queen had been the victim of an attempted indecent assault first emerged in August in a book called Power and the Palace by Valentine Low.
In a conversation with Boris Johnson in 2008, she reportedly told him: “I did what my mother taught me to. I took off my shoe and whacked him in the nuts with the heel.” She then reported the incident to police at Paddington Station and the man was arrested, it was reported.
The Queen has spent more than a decade campaigning against domestic and sexual abuse in her royal role.
