“My coach raped me three times a day.” With these heartbreaking words, former tennis player Angélique Cauchy gave a statement before the judge against Andrew Gueddes, who was her coach when she was a child. Cauchy revealed that she was raped almost 400 times by her coach over two years, an ordeal she recounted to a commission of inquiry looking into operational failures in French sports federations after more cases of sexual abuse and assault became known.
A hell that the athlete managed to describe, leaving those present at said commission frozen, remembering the fear she felt when she saw the “13 steps that separated me from her room to go to be raped” during a 15-day concentration in La Baule . With her testimony, Cauchy has managed to put machismo in French sports in check.
Angélique Cauchy was one of the great promises of French tennis as a child and youth. Gueddes began training her in 1999, when the then future promise of French tennis was only 12 years old and was part of the Sarcelles club (Val-d’Oise). As she already explained to France Info last May: “I was raped almost 400 times by my tennis coach over two years.”
The former athlete did not say anything at the time out of fear and to protect her family. However, now, at 36 years old, the former tennis player recounts the hell she lived through all those years at the hands of her coach, after she gained the courage to denounce him and the French government began an investigation in Parliament, the beginning of which was occurred at the beginning of September.
Cauchy has had to relive the nightmare he suffered during the 90s before the National Assembly. “He started by verbally attacking me. I tried to defend myself and asked him to stop, repeating, day after day: ‘Don’t touch me, that’s not right. I don’t want to.’ Cynically, the coach responded: ‘Don’t worry, this happens very often between coaches and young girls.'”
“I lived the worst two weeks of my life, he raped me three times a day. The first night he asked me to go to his room and I didn’t. And so he entered mine. It was worse. I was imprisoned, I couldn’t go out when I wanted “Cauchy recalled, in a horrible testimony reproduced by Le Parisien.
The former tennis player confessed that she became little more than a “slave” and did not dare to tell anyone. Some tragic events were well known to the top brass of French tennis, but none of them decided to report it, until Cauchy and other players – Sarah Abitbol, ??Claire Palou and Emma Oudiou, then aged between 12 and 17 – were systematically attacked and raped in the aforementioned tennis club, decided to take the step.
“I lived between the ages of 13 and 18 thinking I had AIDS. I thought many times about committing suicide, he raped me three times a day. I lived a nightmare that ruined my career,” said the former tennis player.
Geddes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for assault and rape of minors in January 2021. A case considered “isolated behavior”, but which was what encouraged Cauchy to tell his own story in all kinds of detail.
Currently, Cauchy continues to dedicate himself to the world of sports, despite the traumatic beginnings of his once promising tennis career. She is French, she is a Physical Education teacher, tennis coach and co-founder of the ReBound association, dedicated to changing the world of sports.
Her family – the athlete is married, although it is unknown if she is a mother -, although proud of the step she has taken, suffers from having to see her relive these hard moments, especially given the impact that her story is causing internationally.
