A new book about the relationship between the British royal family and the country's politicians describes a confession from Queen Camilla about a sexual harassment she experienced as a teenager.
An excerpt from Valentine Low's new book, Power and the Palace, published in The Times on August 31, tells of the first meetings between Camilla, now 78, and Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, in 2008.
According to Guto Harri, a communications director who worked with Johnson, 61, when he was newly elected mayor of London, Camilla invited Johnson to Clarence House for a meeting.
Harry said that during the meeting, Camilla shared a very personal story from her adolescence, related to Johnson's plan to open three crisis centers for rape victims in London.
"The serious conversation they had was about the fact that she was the victim of an attempted rape when she was a schoolgirl," Low writes in the book.
“She was on the train to Paddington, about 16 or 17 years old, and a man was moving his hand towards her… At that moment, Johnson asked what happened next. She replied: ‘I did what my mother taught me. I took off my shoe and hit him in the testicles with the heel.’”
Harry added: “She was so calm that when she arrived at Paddington, she got off the train, found a police officer and said, ‘That man just harassed me,’ and he was arrested.”
Buckingham Palace declined to comment when contacted by PEOPLE.
Camilla has long made supporting victims of rape, domestic violence and sexual abuse a priority of her public work.
