Queen Camilla Was Never The Same After A Terrifying Experience As A Teenager

This article includes discussion of assault.

Long before Queen Camilla married King Charles III and even before Camilla met Charles in her 20s, she had a much different, more distressing life-changing experience. It's something that she's kept to herself for a long time. But on the "Today" show with BBC Radio 4 during a conversation about violence against women, Camilla opened up about "being attacked on a train" when she was a teenager.

She didn't go too much into detail about what actually happened, but she included enough for people to understand how stressful and violating the incident must have been. She explained: "[it was] somebody I didn't know. I was reading my book and you know this boy/man attacked me and ... I did fight back. ... I remember getting off the train and my mother looking at me and saying 'why's your hair standing on end and why's the button missing from your coat.'" It's not clear if Camilla told her mother what happened, but what is clear is that this event had a real effect on her.

Queen Camilla also detailed the lingering impacts of the attack by a stranger. "I remember anger," she said. "I was so furious about it, and it sort of lurked for many years." Camilla was apparently inspired to speak out about this harrowing event after hearing the story of BBC racing commentator John Hunt. Hunt's wife Carol and two of their daughters were brutally murdered by the ex partner of one of their daughters. Camilla was speaking with John and his surviving daughter Amy on the BBC Radio 4 show about sexual assault and domestic abuse.

Amy responded to Camilla opening up about what happened to her decades before. "Thank you for sharing that, Your Majesty," Amy said. "It takes a lot to share these things because every woman has a story." It can be important to talk about traumatic events, in part because it helps you realize that you're not alone. And with such a high profile person like Camilla telling her story, it could help bring greater awareness to the issue.

It's similar to why King Charles III told the world that he had cancer, helping to bring attention to the situation. That isn't to equate what the of them went through, but rather to show how the value of shining light on things that can often stay hidden.