Selima Sfar accuses former coach of rape her as a child. “I didn’t understand”

Former Tunisian tennis player Selima Sfar decided to confess in the interview with “L’Equipe”, that she was raped by her coach in childhood. This is a shocking news for the tennis community. Sfar in 2001 was even 75th in the WTA ranking. She became the first Arab woman in the top 100.

At the age of 12 she decided to become a professional tennis player. For this reason, she had to move to France, where she trained under Regis de Camaret at the Biarritz Tennis School. As it turned out years later, the coach made her life into hell. During one of their trips from Tunis to Bordeaux de Camaret came to pick her up from the airport.

“In the middle of the trip, it was one o’clock in the morning, he stopped on the side of the road and started touching me, doing things to me. At the time I didn’t even know what was happening, I didn’t understand anything. Thirty-five years ago, 12 years is not 12 years now. All I knew was that he was one of the best coaches in the world, a little ‘God’ of tennis in France and, if I really wanted to become a champion, I needed him” Sfar said.

Selima Sfar about her hell: It took me 35 years to say it publicly

“I woke up and he touched me. Then he went from touching to raping, very quickly. Each time it was the same, I was paralyzed. It lasted almost three years” Sfar added.

Than she decided to finish the cooperation with the coach. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt a horrible rage, a sadness. I didn’t want to train with him anymore, I couldn’t. I went to Bordeaux, where I trained for a year and a half with Henri Dumont. Then I decided to go to London and not have a coach anymore. It was a radical decision. I trained alone six hours a day. I was disciplined and made it to the top 100.” Sfar described.

Former Tunisian said, how hard it was for her to speak loudly about that horrible situation. “I wasn’t prepared for my parents to find out like that. It was impossible. It took me 25 years to admit it to myself and 35 years to say it publicly” Sfar said.

French tennis player Isabelle Demongeot revealed in 2005 that she had been raped for nine years by de Camaret. In 2014 the former coach was sentenced to 10 years in prison after the complaint of 20 female tennis players. He committed rapes at a training camp in Saint-Tropez at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.