The old Tenniswoman Selima Sfar, the first Arab woman to integrate the top 100 in the WTA ranking, decided to break the silence. Thirty-five years after the facts, she accuses of rape her former coach Régis de Camaret.
In a testimony left to the team, she recounts the sexual violence suffered from her former coach when she was only 12 years old.
Aged 46 years old, Selima Sfar said he had been the victim of sexual abuse on the part of her coach for three years, when she had joined her training center in Biarritz.
“When I was 12 and a half, I was abused by Régis de Camaret. No one knows my story (…) I took a long time to free myself. It is a big trauma. When it happens, we say to ourselves: “I sacrificed everything for that, I have to get there. I worked like a patient. All my life, I thought I was weak, loose, zero. Until I understand.
Today, at 46, I can talk because I worked a lot on me and I was helped. Shame has disappeared. When I cry, it’s emotion. These are not the same tears. Shame has turned into pride. I am proud of what I have become. “She said.
“I took 25 years to admit it, 35 years old to say it publicly. Respect to Isabelle Demongeot and all the women who spoke. I understand that we are not talking, you have to do it as you feel it, “she added.
And to continue: “I came from an Arab country. All I knew was that he was one of the best coaches in the world, a little “God” in tennis in France and if I really wanted to become champion, I needed him. (…) Each time, it was the same thing, I was paralyzed. It lasted almost three years. ”
The player also details the consequences of these abuses on her life as a woman and athlete: “In my head, I said to myself why I did not have the strength to say no, why I did not say no, I am loose. On the court, at any time I needed self -confidence and making a choice, it was super hard. ”
Régis de Camaret was sentenced in 2014 to ten years in prison for rape and attempted rape, out of two of his former players.
Selima Sfar was a professional from 1999 to 2011. She was the first Arab player to reach the world top 100. She started tennis from an early age at the Carthage Tennis Club before leaving Tunisia to train in France alongside Nathalie Tauziat and Régis de Camaret.
Among the juniors, she won in 1992 the Arab Junior Singles and gained the quarter-finals of the Junior Tournament in Roland-Garros. In 1994, she was champion of African junior.
She became professional in 1999, at twenty-two years old. In 2000, she qualified for the large table at the US Open: she was then the first Tunisian to achieve such a performance. On July 16, 2001, she rose to 75th in the world.
