The PC royalettes can step aside – Camilla’s the one with real courage

Afemale royal personage this week took a stand on the controversial issue of sexual violence against women. Instead of the usual polite banalities and grandstanding that we have come to expect from celebrities and royals on serious subjects, she actually said something powerful and important.

She did not mince her words. ‘How many more women must be harassed, raped or murdered?’ she stormed.

She argued that it was crucial for women to get the ‘men in our lives involved in this movement’.

That seemed to suggest that the majority of men didn’t care, or weren’t bothered about women being attacked or raped, which I don’t believe to be true, nor even fair. But there we are.

So which royal dared to speak out so fearlessly in the face of potential controversy? Not Kate, not the-meyou-can-see meghan, not Beatrice, eugenie nor their mothership, the fergie. Not Zara, not Sophie, not a vent from a Kent, not a Gloucester on the roster.

The diatribe did not come from any of the younger, more politically correct set, with their carefully curated grab-bag of causes, platitudes and hashtag activism. Remarkably, it came from the Duchess of Cornwall.

Yes, it was 74-year-old Camilla who made one of the most startling speeches I can ever recall being made by a royalette.

It wasn’t an easy subject. I didn’t agree with everything she said. In fact, I barely agreed with anything she said, including her bold assertation that society has come to believe that ‘violence against women is normal’.

Wait, what? Since when? everybody knows that rape and murder are bad, come off it.

Yet how refreshing to hear a Duchess, by God, issuing such a powerful testimony; saying words of substance about something that really matters.

Camilla was speaking at a reception organised by the WOW foundation (Women of the World) to launch the Shameless! festival — a series of events taking place next month which will bring together art and activism to confront and change attitudes towards sexual violence.

The heart rather sinks at the thought of ‘workshops’ and ‘wellness spaces’ aimed at achieving this, but campaigners report that the stigma of shame can still haunt survivors of sexual violence, leaving them to struggle with another layer of anguish on top of the terrible violations they have already suffered.

That is absolutely heartbreaking. I hate to think of these women and girls caught in a lacerating spiral of self-blame after being attacked. Or — perhaps even worse — to be accused of somehow bringing the attack upon themselves.

anything that can help to lessen their burden of misplaced guilt is to be encouraged and supported.

DURING her speech the Duchess referenced several recent victims of violent crime, including Sarah everard — kidnapped, raped and murdered by serving police officer Wayne Couzens.

Couzens, who used Covid powers to conduct a fake arrest of the 33year-old marketing executive as she walked home from a friend’s house in march, has just lodged an appeal against his whole-life sentence. He feels he has been badly done by!

Is he appealing because he doesn’t believe violating and killing a woman deserves such punishment? Does he, like Camilla fears, believe that violence against women is now the norm? Or is he appealing because he is a psychopath, beyond the reach of reason and shame?

This is important, because one of the more startling things Camilla said was that ‘rapists are not born, they are constructed’.

Is this entirely true? Is it not the case that some people are not shaped into monsters by circumstance or corrupt influence, but are just born bad, beyond repair, their psyche a poisoned pip at the heart of a rotten apple?

People for whom no amount of Heads Together meetings or workshop sessions will ever cure their mental abnormality or the sickness in their soul?

If a brute like Wayne Couzens is a construct, as the Duchess seems to be suggesting, that implies that at some point he can be deconstructed. His decision to appeal indicates that he is a long way from forming an appreciation or understanding of the gravity of his crime.

It is true that there have been some recent and terrible acts of violence against women. Sabina Nessa, the primary school teacher killed minutes from home; Geetika Goyal, stabbed to death by her husband; Wenjing lin, a schoolgirl found dead at home; Bennylyn Burke, a mother who was killed. each and every one a terrible and regrettable death.

But while duchesses and organisations campaign to try to keep women safe, it is important to remember that cases such as these are so shocking because they are, thankfully, so rare.

and with more than 75 per cent of murder victims being male, it is men rather than women who are in far greater danger of meeting a violent end in this country. If I had children, I’d be far more worried about my sons than my daughters.

and while I genuinely applaud her passionate immersion in such a difficult subject, I wonder if Camilla urging women to get their menfolk ‘involved’ is entirely helpful.

The huge majority of men have never committed or condoned sexual violence against women and would be horrified at the thought that they would casually ignore such crimes. So let’s not make this a polarising issue.

Our fathers, brothers, male friends and colleagues — we are all in it together. On this issue in particular, let us not be apart.

PRINCESS Mako of Japan married her commoner sweetheart and had to leave the royal family. She had no problem with that. She made her choice, she accepted the consequences. She went quietly, off into a life of anonymity, all for the sake of love. Mako has no plans to give interviews, she doesn’t want to save the world before teatime and says that all she wants is a peaceful life with her love. This so reminds me of Prince Harry, I don’t think.