NADINE DORRIES: I’ve met Camilla. The way she’s got even with her train groper is proof she leads by example

Yesterday, we learned that as a schoolgirl of 16 or 17, our future Queen was the victim of sexual assault while travelling alone on a train.

A fellow passenger was moving his hand ‘further and further’. Did she panic? Did she freeze? Did she hell!

She remembered her mother, Rosalind’s advice, took off her shoe and whacked the man ‘in the nuts with the heel’.

The young Camilla Shand then alighted the train at Paddington, reported him to a member of staff and he was arrested.

We don’t know if the miscreant was ever charged, but we can hope he found it painful to walk for a few hours at least – and thought twice about inflicting his vile behaviour on a woman ever again.

This story, revealed in a new book, Power And The Palace, confirms what many of us feel instinctively about Queen Camilla – that she is at her core the practical, no-nonsense type who refuses ever to be a victim.

For those who regard her actions as reckless, that the situation might have escalated, I would say that she obviously carried out her own risk assessment in the moment and decided otherwise. And I’m sure she removed herself pronto to another carriage with more passengers afterwards.

I applaud her action and her response. She didn’t brood on it – but nor did she forget it.

Brave Camilla, pictured around the time of the attack, with her mother Rosalind

Queen Camilla attends the Service of Remembrance to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of VJ Day at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas on August 15

While she has never spoken publicly about the incident, she has, over the years, shared it with friends on a one-to-one basis where appropriate and also with some of the relevant charities she works with.

Indeed, we only know about it now because she confided in Boris Johnson when, as Mayor of London, he was talking to her about his plans for three new rape crisis centres. (By the way, it wasn’t Boris who spilled the beans, but his former head of communications when he was interviewed by the book’s author Valentine Low.)

That was the context in which Camilla shared her experience of sexual assault – and she went on to support victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and rape in her public work.

I’ve met Queen Camilla several times. On one occasion, I was invited to a reception at Clarence House in aid of charities that support victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

No one there could doubt her genuine concern and compassion, or fail to be impressed by the ease with which she spoke to former victims.

One of her own initiatives in her work with Sexual Assault Referral Centres has been to provide rape victims, who must undergo intrusive physical examinations, with washbags of toiletries to use afterwards.

It’s a small gesture of kindness at one of the worst times in a woman’s life, a message that there are people who care for you and who are with you in this hour of pain and shame

To me, this is proof, if proof was needed, that Camilla is the very best of feminists. She has fully embraced feminism by supporting other women. It’s not what you say that matters but what you do, and the Queen is leading by example.

So why hasn’t she spoken out about her experience before, some may ask? Wouldn’t it have explained her allegiance to these causes, made her somehow more relatable? The answer is simple: she has never wanted her experiences to divert attention away from those she believes to have suffered from serious abuse.

She has never wanted to be the story in a country where two to three women a week die at the hands of a man as a result of domestic violence. She has always believed that the spotlight should remain firmly on those who are the true victims.

This controversial cause is not one the Queen had to champion as a Royal. There are far less demanding charities vying for her patronage. But she feels passionately about this issue, speaking openly at events such as the one I attended at Clarence House about her friends who have been victims of domestic violence, helping to remove the stigma and the assumption that domestic violence and sexual abuse is confined to the disadvantaged and vulnerable. She has shown that, just as with child sexual abuse, perpetrators are from all backgrounds.

During her ordeal on the train, young Camilla got mad with her attacker. Her work on behalf of the victims of sexual and domestic abuse today is proof that now she’s got even.