Angelique Cauchy, French tennis star has revealed the hell she went through in the hands of her coach, Andrew Geddes, who she said raped her 400 times when she was 12 years old and falsely convinced her to believe she had AIDS until she was 18 years old.
Cauchy made the revelation when testifying in the French parliament as she told of her horrifying ordeal with Geddes who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the rape and sexual assault of four young girls in 2021, Daily Mail reports.
It was reported that during Geddes’s trial, the court was told of the 55-year-old’s brutal sexual abuse which he often recorded at his home, in his car or at the tennis club.
Cauchy, now 36, started working with Geddes at Sarcelles Tennis Club, Paris, in 1999 when she was 12 and France’s second junior player.
She said that the abuse began the sexual abuse started a few months after she began working Geddes, with the coach telling her, “You know it happens sometimes in relationships between coach and student, we spend a lot of time together, it’s normal.”
Cauchy said that at the beginning, Geddes would take her to see Paris Saint German FC play at their home ground. Over two years, she said the relationship quickly became abusive and he raped her 400 times.
She told the Palais Bourbon how Geddes raped her three times a day during a two-week period at a training camp.
She said, “I lived the worst two weeks of my life. I thought many times about committing suicide. He raped me three times a day. The first night he asked me to go to his room and I didn’t do it, then he came into mine. I was in prison.”
Cauchy described how he had manipulated her so much that she started to voluntarily visit his room at night.
She said that “The evenings after, it seems crazy, but I went there on my own, and I took those 13 steps that separated me from his room.”
According to her, Geddes went on to emotionally manipulate and gaslight her and convinced her that he had given her AIDS.
“He came to tell me one day, “I have AIDS, that’s for sure, I gave it to you.” At the end of the 1990s, it was something that was much scarier than now, it paralysed me. I lived from 13 to 18 years old thinking I had AIDS. But he lied to me, just to destroy me. It was perhaps even more destructive than the rape,’ she told France Info
When a member of the tennis club complained of Geddes’ predatory and abusive behaviour, the club president allegedly replied: “Yes, but he brings us titles.”
An inquiry was launched in July, examining the “operational failures within sports federations, the sports movement and governance bodies”.
Following testimonies given this summer at the Palais Bourbon, the report is expected to be released in December.
