Queen says she was ‘furious’ after she was attacked on train as teenager
Camilla was in conversation with John Hunt and his daughter Amy, whose family were murdered at their home last year.
The Queen has recalled in a radio broadcast being “so angry” and “furious” when she was attacked on a train as a teenager.
Camilla was in conversation with John Hunt and his daughter Amy, whose family were murdered at their home last year, and former prime minister Baroness Theresa May for the recording.
Louise Hunt, 25, her sister Hannah Hunt, 28, and their mother Carol Hunt, 61, were killed by Kyle Clifford, 27 – Louise’s ex-partner – in a quiet cul-de-sac in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on July 9 last year.
Camilla said on the recording, which was aired on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I remember something that had been lurking in the back of my brain for a very long time, that when I was a teenager, I was attacked on a train, and I’d sort of forgotten about it, but I remember at the time being so angry. It was anger.”
She added: “Somebody I didn’t know. I was reading my book, and you know, this boy, man, attacked me, and I did fight back.
“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?’.
“But I remember anger, and I was so furious about it, and it’s sort of lurked for many years.
“And I think, you know, when all the subject about domestic abuse came up, and suddenly you hear a story like John and Amy’s, it’s something that I feel very strongly about.”
After hearing the Queen share the story, Amy Hunt said: “Thank you for sharing that story first, Your Majesty, because that takes a lot to share these things because every woman has a story.”
The incident was first recounted in the book Power And The Palace: The Inside Story Of The Monarchy And 10 Downing Street by Valentine Low, a former royal reporter for The Times newspaper.
Camilla did “what my mother taught me” and took off her shoe to fend off the man as she travelled to London’s Paddington station in the early 1960s when aged 16 or 17, it was previously reported.
A source close to the Queen said previously: “If some good comes of this publication, which is that the wider issues are discussed, it de-stigmatises the whole topic and empowers girls today to take action and seek help, and to talk about it, then that’s a good outcome.”
In Power And The Palace, Boris Johnson’s former communications director Guto Harri recalls Mr Johnson telling him about a meeting with the Queen at her official London home Clarence House around 2008, the year the politician was first elected London mayor.
In the extract, published in The Sunday Times earlier this year, Mr Harri said about the pair: “They obviously got on like a house on fire. He (Mr Johnson) was making guttural noises about how much he admired and liked her.”
Mr Harri went on to speak about a conversation between Camilla and Mr Johnson, about an assault that she said occurred when she was a schoolgirl.
“She was on a train going to Paddington – she was about 16, 17 – and some guy was moving his hand further and further…”
Mr Harri said that after Mr Johnson asked what she did next, Camilla had 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.”
The Queen has visited rape centres in the UK and abroad, hosted receptions for sexual assault and domestic abuse survivors, and spoken out on the issue, but her experience as a teenager has not been the main driving force of her work, rather the stories of the women who have endured attacks.
In an ITV documentary last year, she vowed she will “keep trying” to end domestic violence, until she is “able to no more”, and was followed over the course of a year for the programme looking at her work in the field.
