‘Her Majesty The Queen: Behind Closed Doors‘, a new 90-minute documentary has given royal watchers unique access to Queen Camilla’s work into domestic and sexual abuse.
The documentary followed Her Majesty over the course of a year as she attends official engagements and never before seen private meetings with survivors and change makers who are trying to achieve progress in this field.
We’ve taken a look at some of the key moments in the documentary…
Her Majesty The Queen meets survivors of domestic abuse. (ITV/Love Monday)
One of the first parts of the documentary touched upon Camilla’s inspiration for choosing domestic violence as a key theme of her Royal work. Viewers were introduced to Diana Parkes whose daughter, Joanna Simpson, was brutally killed in 2010 by her estranged husband. Diana said Jo was the ‘most loving, kind, beautiful daughter you could wish to have’.
Speaking about Diana, Camilla said ‘she’s an 80 year old grandmother, whose daughter who she loved dearly was killed at the hands of such an evil perpetrator. I think she’s so strong because not many people would be able to survive the death of a daughter. I admire her more than I can say’.
Meeting Camilla on the Isle of Man in March 2024, Diana said that she feels ‘really comfortable’ around Camilla and that The Queen is the ‘most compassionate lady’.
In 2016, Diana Parkes and Hetti Barkworth-Nanton, Joanna’s close friend attended an event at SafeLives alongside survivors of domestic abuse, where they spoke to the then-Duchess about their experiences.
Reflecting on the initial meeting, Camilla told Diana that she would ‘never ever forget that meeting’ with it being engraved on her heart. Camilla added how she spotted Diana straight away sitting there and thought ‘there is someone from my generation’. Having heard Diana’s story and what happened to Joanna, Camilla tried to put herself in Diana’s shoes and noted that if it had been her daughter, ‘she wouldn’t have been able to sit and be dignified as you [Diana] was.’
The domestic violence statistics in the @itv programme are staggering:
• 3 women per week take their own life because of a violent relationship
• Every 5 days, a woman is killed by a current or former partner
Watch below to hear how Queen Camilla took up campaigning on this… pic.twitter.com/izmVcTLfnh— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) November 11, 2024
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The Queen noted that her initial reaction to hearing Joanna’s story was to cry, despite being in the presence of a lot of police and ‘hard-nosed journalists’. From that meeting she decided that she wanted to do something as ‘domestic abuse happens all the time’,
That’s exactly what she did, viewers were shown how just six months after that initial meeting at SafeLives, a reception was held at Clarence House which brought together everyone who was working in the domestic abuse space such as politicians, charities, survivors and ambassadors.
Camilla stated that if there had been a spark to her choosing this specific cause, ‘then Diana ignited it’ and off she went from there.
The Queen meets survivors of domestic abuse. (Love Monday/ITV)
In 2024, 61% of refuge referrals were rejected, due to lack of space of capacity to support. An annual investment of £180 million is needed to meet the needs of women and children in England. A powerful part of the documentary showed The Queen visiting a refuge – which was never-before-seen footage.
During her visit to one of Housing for Women’s refuges, The Queen met with a survivor who is rebuilding her life with the charity’s support. Her Majesty also spoke with the team about the vital services they deliver to enable women escape violence and abuse.
One survivor who was staying in the refuge had bravely told their story for the first time, to which Camilla said she was ‘very honoured’ that the service user was telling her story for the first time to Her Majesty. The survivor said when ‘we first met, we clicked straight away – he was funny, charming, witty, romantic’, when Camilla said ‘like they usually are’. The survivor then said ‘that’s when the abuse started gradually, the odd slap turned into a punch and then beating’. She explained that she was ’embarrassed and ashamed’ that this was happening to her, keeping it to herself and tried to get through it on her own. She couldn’t get out she was a prisoner.
The survivor went on to say ‘one time he was getting agitated about something and he tried to ask him what was wrong and he turned around and he punched me straight in the face and then he ran to the door and locked it’. She then called a friend, but the perpetrator threw the phone but it still stayed connected to the friend who in turn called the police. The survivor then explained how the perpetrator was released from jail as he had told them that the victim had done it to herself. She was too scared to make a statement.
Camilla said that it was so important that the survivor tell her story to the world what happened to her, if she can get through it, so can others.
In 2020, the then-Duchess of Cornwall met speakers on the ‘Domestic Abuse: Everyone’s Problem’ panel, which is made up of campaigners, abuse survivors and Safe Lives pioneers, including CEO Suzanne Jacob. (Clarence House)
Using footage from World of Women Festival 2020 as the backdrop, the documentary shifted onto coercive control. Theresea May, former British Prime Minister said ‘over the years, we’ve started to realise that domestic abuse is wider than what we used to call it, as it was always referred to as domestic violence. A partner, normally a man, hitting their female partner causing them physical injury but over the years we’ve come to realise it’s about more than that’.
Camilla went on to note that ‘coercive control is the most frightening bit of domestic abuse, you met somebody who you think is wonderful, attractive and then bit by bit, they start to undermine you. They take away your friends, they take away your family, they take away your money, they start dressing you and yet all the time, people still believe they do it because they love them’.
The documentary also covered another key part of Camilla’s work in this space – sexual abuse. Camilla said ‘sexual violence not my subject to talk about and it’s been a taboo subject for so long, so I just thought to myself if only we could get more people recognising this with people who know a lot more about it than I do and get them all talking together, we might be able to get somewhere’. In May 2024, The Queen gave a speech at Buckingham Palace to recognise those who support survivors of sexual assault and to relaunch her Washbags Project. At the event, Camilla said that stories and experiences ‘are vital tools as we seek to bring about change: to forge a world in which people, whoever and wherever they are, do not live in fear of being abused’ and added how ‘speaking about the experience is one of the key ways to survive it. By sharing with one another today, we can strengthen our alliance against sexual abuse in all its forms’.
Yvonne Traynor, CEO of Rape Crisis South London (1997-2020) said that she was ‘looking for someone to champion their cause’ and had written to about 100 high-profile individuals, including pop stars, actors but not had one single reply. It wasn’t until she was looking at the press and saw the then-Duchess of Cornwall, who had ‘been given some awful press yet handled it with grace and dignity and thought that’s a really strong woman’, so she wrote to her and ‘couldn’t be more surprised to get a response’.
Camilla explained that she had visited quite a few rape centres and talked to survivors of rape – but this was rape by strangers – and never thought rape would occur in the home.
The conversation then moved on to Camilla’s Washbags Project was initiated by the then-Duchess in 2013, having heard the stories of rape and sexual abuse survivors during her visits to the Sexual Assault Referral Centres. The scheme provides a bag of toiletries, donated by Boots, to people who have been affected by rape and sexual abuse following a forensic examination, as a small gesture of comfort during a difficult time.
Speaking about the initiative and The Queen’s attention to this issue, Jess Philips MP added that she ‘used to work in a sexual assault centre, and things like smell affect victims, so they wouldn’t have been able to control what they wore, wouldn’t have been able to control their perfume that they wore. Something fresh, that’s for them might seem small but is massively powerful. The Queen is pushing the door wider and wider open, that means she stands up as our Queen and talks openly about rape and sexual violence. That seems unimaginable.
The Queen has worked to amplify the voices of survivors of domestic and sexual violence stories for over ten years. In the forthcoming ITV documentary ‘Her Majesty The Queen: Behind Closed Doors’, you can learn more about Her Majesty’s work in this area, and the vital… pic.twitter.com/xlfuA4bWbU
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) November 7, 2024
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You can watch ‘Her Majesty The Queen: Behind Closed Doors‘ on ITVX.
