The Queen has spoken publicly about being attacked on a train as a teenager, recalling she felt “so angry” and “furious” following the incident, which she said stayed with her for years.
Camilla shared her experience during a radio discussion about violence against women, recorded with John Hunt and his daughter Amy, whose family were murdered at their home last year, and former prime minister Baroness Theresa May.
The conversation, which was aired on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, focused on the lasting impact of abuse and the importance of speaking openly about it.
Recalling her memory of the attack, the Queen said it had “been lurking in the back of my brain for a very long time.”
“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.
Camilla said she remembered getting off the train and her mother noticing something was wrong, “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,” she added.
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.”
During the conversation, recorded in the Garden Room at Clarence House last month, Camilla praised Mr Hunt and his daughter for their strength in the aftermath of their loss.
Addressing them, she said: “I’d just like to say, wherever your family is now, they’d be so proud of you both.
“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.”
Louise Hunt, 25, her sister Hannah Hunt, 28, and their mother Carol Hunt, 61, were killed at their home in a quiet cul-de-sac in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on 9 July last year by Louise’s ex-partner, Kyle Clifford, 27.
Mr Hunt said a year on after his family was killed it “remains really difficult on a minute-by-minute basis”, adding “but you have to try and find the strength in our position to arm yourself with as many tools as possible that are going to help you get through that next hour, get through that next day”.
He added: “At the risk of embarrassing Amy, she’s been my best counsel from the word go.
“We talk all the time. I used to say ‘I couldn’t do it without you’, but now I say ‘I can do it with you’.”
Ms Hunt added: “I think there’s a huge part of us that’s still in disbelief, in shock. Perhaps we’ll be in that state for the rest of our lives, given the magnitude of our loss.
“We miss them every single minute of the day.”
A fundraising gala was held earlier this month to launch The Hunt Family Fund in memory of Carol, Louise and Hannah. The fund aims to support charities and causes that hep and inspire young women.
The Queen spoke of how she previously went to a meeting of charity SafeLives and heard the stories of women who had been killed or attacked.
She added: “I remember being just so shocked and horrified by the whole thing, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place, and it made me realise how naive I’d been about this sort of thing. I mean, we read about it occasionally in the papers, but we don’t realise that it’s happening all the time.”
Camilla also spoke about the need to tackle violence against women by intervening early, including working with young people and potential perpetrators.
“We’ve got to get to the root of the matter,” she said. “If you can get them early enough and teach them respect for women. I think that’s so important to get into schools.”
The Queen’s own experience was first made public in the book Power And The Palace by Valentine Low, a former royal reporter for The Times newspaper, which reported that Camilla was aged 16 or 17 when she was attacked while travelling to London’s Paddington station in the early 1960s.
According to the book, Camilla did “what my mother taught me” and took off her shoe to fend off the man and reported the incident to a uniformed officer when she arrived, leading to the man’s arrest.
A source close to the Queen said previously said that speaking openly about the incident could help de-stigmatise the topic and empower girls to take action and seek help.
Camilla has 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.
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