Queen Camilla is undertaking a series of engagements in Cornwall today, marking her first public appearance since a new book claimed that she was the victim of an attempted indecent assault. The Queen, who has made the issues of domestic violence and sexual assaults key tenets of her work, is said to have fought off her attacker using the heel of her shoe.
The incident is 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. The book claims that the royal recalled the incident to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Today, the Queen is visiting three of her patronages in Cornwall. Her first engagement is with ShelterBox, an international disaster relief charity, staff and volunteers at the charity’s headquarters to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary.
In an extract of Mr Low’s new book, published in the Sunday Times, Mr Johnson’s former communications director, Guto Harri, recalls his boss telling him about a meeting with Camilla at her official London home, Clarence House, around 2008, the year the politician was first elected London Mayor.
Mr Harri said the pair “obviously got on like a house on fire”, before speaking about a conversation between Camilla and Mr Johnson, about an assault that she said occurred when she was a schoolgirl. He said: “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.”
The former communications director continued: “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.”
Speaking on Sky News earlier today, Mr Harri said the incident may help explain Camilla’s “commitment to the rape crisis centres that were opened in London at the time and a whole host of work that the Queen has put in that very sensitive and important area over the last decade or so”.
Camilla has never spoken publicly about the attack, preferring to focus on survivors of domestic violence and sexual assaults she has supported for many years.
A source close to the Queen said: “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.”
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 would “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.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
