In a shocking statement before a special committee of the French Parliament, Former French tennis player Angélique Cauchy, 36, revealed that she was a victim of sexual abuse more than 400 times in a two-year period at the hands of his trainer, Andrew Gueddes, 55 years old.
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Gueddes was already sentenced in 2021 to 18 years in prison for allegations of rape of minors between 12 and 17 years old.
The details emerged during Cauchy’s appearance before the National Assembly (AN), the first chamber of the French Parliament. Her testimony is part of an investigation that seeks to shed light on a systematic and disturbing culture of abuse in the world of French tennis during the eighties, in which girls and adolescents were victims of sexual violence, assaults and cover-ups by the authorities. sports.
According to the Spanish media ABCGueddes’ case was initially perceived as “isolated behavior”, but Cauchy’s revelations suggest that the directors of the Sarcelles club and many members of the French Tennis Federation were aware of the abuses, although they chose to ignore the issue.
Although Gueddes had been accused of rape on multiple occasions, Cauchy decided to file her complaint last spring. In her testimony, the former player described the horrors that she experienced when she was between 12 and 14 years old, while she was in second place in the junior tennis ranking and was a victim of abuse from her coach, with the complicity of sports authorities.
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Rape and abuse appear to be widespread in sport
Tennis player Angelique Cauchy
She was raped three times a day by her coach when she was 12 years old. pic.twitter.com/1B2kf8LnvB— silvia ♻️ (@Silvia33domin) September 13, 2023
“My trainer, Andrew Gueddes, raped me more than 400 times over two years. It started with verbal abuse. I tried to defend myself and begged him to stop, repeating over and over: ‘Don’t touch me, this is not right, I I don’t want to’. Cynically, the coach responded: ‘Don’t worry, this is common among coaches and young girls,'” Cauchy revealed.
“I became little more than a slave, in a state of constant drowsiness. When we were in La Baule, in the north of France, our rooms were only ten meters away. He started to get into my bed and then managed to get me out of bed. to his room. I lived a nightmare that ruined my career. I thought about committing suicide several times. Joking with me, he even said that I had AIDS, and I lived for ten or fifteen years in fear of being infected,” denounced the former tennis player.
The National Assembly discovered that an employee of the administration of the president of the club where Cauchy played shared the story with the official, who responded: “Well, maybe it has happened and will continue to happen. But in this case, the coach brings us titles.”
The Commission of Inquiry is expected to publish the results of its work in December, leaving it in the hands of Emmanuel Macron’s government to take action following Parliament’s conclusions.
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*This content was made with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on information from La Nación de Argentina, and was reviewed by the journalist and an editor.
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