Queen Camilla was the victim of an attempted indecent assault as a teenager, according to a new book about the Royal Family. The Queen is said to have fought off her attacker using the heel of her shoe.
The attempted assault is recounted in Power and the Palace by the former Royal editor of the Times newspaper, Valentine Low.
He says the Queen told Boris Johnson the story of her experience in 2008 when he was mayor of London.
It is reported that the Queen was 16 or 17-years-old when the incident happened on a train to Paddington Station.
The man is said to have been touching the teenage Camilla Shand when she took off her shoe and hit him with it.
It was, she told Johnson, something her mother had told her to do if she ever found herself in that situation.
When she arrived in London, she reported the incident to station staff and the man was arrested.
Buckingham Palace has made no official statement on the story but is not disputing the details of the account.
“She did the responsible thing,” Low told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Not only was she resourceful and strong, she was a responsible citizen in making sure the man was arrested.”
Much of the Queen’s public work in recent years has been supporting the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and rape.
She is patron of the charity SafeLives and has visited women’s refuges and rape crisis centres across the UK and globally.
In a number of powerful speeches, she has spoken of the courage of those who have experienced domestic violence and why they should not feel fear or stigma in coming forward.
In a speech in 2020 she said: “Through my work, I have talked to many women who have lived with coercive control and domestic violence and, thankfully, come out at the other end as the victors not the victims.
“They are some of the bravest people I have ever met. Their stories are harrowing and have reduced even the toughest of their listeners to tears. That is why it is so vital that these survivors should no longer feel any shame or any blame.”
And at a reception at Clarence House in April for SafeLives, she spoke of domestic abuse.
“I would not be standing here if it was 10 years ago because we wouldn’t have been talking about it – it was a taboo subject. Nobody actually wanted to talk about it.
“But now 10 years later we’ve got survivors telling their story who years ago would’ve been too ashamed to come forward to tell their stories, but now they’ll get up and talk and inspire others to talk.”
Sources close to the Queen say she has not gone public with the attempted attack before to avoid drawing attention to her experience rather than to the victims she now works with.
They also say this episode did not motivate the Queen to get involved in supporting domestic violence organisations as that work stemmed from hearing victims stories over the years.
“She didn’t want to draw attention to her at the expense of their experiences,” Low explained.
“She’s heard a lot of the stories over the years and she’s got a very deep seated, sincere interest in this issue and it doesn’t all spring from one incident when she was a teenager.”
Royal sources also say if discussion around the Queen’s past experience helps destigmatise what far too many girls still suffer today, then that would be a positive from what was a negative episode.
Over the weekend, the Times also reported that Elizabeth II wanted to remain in the European Union at the time of Brexit.
Low told the BBC: “If anything, the late Queen was a reluctant remainer as so many of us were.
“A lot of people in this country were very critical of the EU… but they didn’t want to change, they thought that we would not be better off out. I think that’s what she felt.
“She certainly had criticisms of the EU.”
Low also recounted the politics of the Prince of Wales, who Low said has “always been at huge pains to make sure he’s not treading on any political toes”.
On Prince William’s homeless charity, launched in 2023, Low said the prince spoke to ministers first so as to not “upset them”.
“I think it’s possible a slightly different approach to what his father had.”
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