Paris, March 2007 - A PROMINENT French women’s tennis coach, whose pupils included Wimbledon stars, has been remanded in custody accused of raping young players in his charge.
The arrest of Régis de Camaret, 65, pending an investigation into sexual abuse claims, has shaken women’s tennis. He was a familiar courtside figure who for more
than two decades coached Nathalie Tauziat, a Wimbledon finalist. Isabelle Demongeot, a doubles champion, was one of 10 former pupils to have complained about his behaviour. She claimed last week that de Camaret, who also coached Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, the Spanish champion, had begun abusing her regularly when she was 14. The coach and his pupil saved money on the junior tournament circuit by sharing hotel rooms.
“I was convinced that I had to obey all his demands so that he would go on coaching me,” she said. “He had conditioned me to think that he alone could make me reach the highest level in the game.”
Demongeot, now 41, ended up winning several doubles titles with Tauziat, another star pupil of de Camaret who eventually became his business partner in a tennis academy in southwestern France.
The abuse alleged by Demongeot happened too long ago to be taken into account by investigators but the coach is under investigation for “rape and attempted rape” of two minors between 1989 and 1991 and several other former pupils have come forward to testify about being abused when they were 14 or 15.
One of the accusers, identified only as Marie, was 14 when de Camaret allegedly assaulted her for the first time.
“I went home, ashamed, wanting to wash myself,” she said. “I was aware that I had just been subjected to something dirty. It was not love.”
She claims that on another occasion de Camaret assaulted her in his car in a motorway layby on the way home from a tournament. “I closed my eyes, hoping that it would pass as quickly as possible,” she said.
Another time he had told her there would be a training session even though it was raining. When she turned up, he was waiting. “I was trapped,” she said. “I began to find subterfuges, to always be accompanied by another girl.”
After talking to other pupils, she decided to go to the police. “I realised that I had not consented and I was not crazy.”
Police were reported to have removed photographs of some of the young players from de Camaret’s home: he would sometimes lie on his stomach at the back of the court taking photographs of his pupils, according to Marie. The idea, he told them, was to study their “legwork”.
De Camaret said through his lawyer that he was innocent of any crime and baffled by the charges against him. He demanded to be released from prison.
“He does not understand why this is coming out 20 years later,” said Emmanuel Daoud, the lawyer.
De Camaret’s Gaillou tennis centre at Capbreton, in southwestern France, is familiar to young players from all over Europe. In 2005 a group of junior players from Warwickshire received a master class there from de Camaret and Tauziat, the Wimbledon runner-up in 1998.
Tauziat, who was coached by de Camaret from 1981 until her retirement in 2003, said she believed de Camaret was innocent, emphasising that the school remained open to its 50 pupils. “The club is functioning and will continue to function,” she said.
De Camaret was reproached at Wimbledon for coaching Tauziat from the side of the court and has long been at loggerheads with the French Tennis Federation, which he claimed was run by bureaucrats who cared little about the game.
Demongeot, from St Tropez, met de Camaret when she was 11 at the local tennis club, where he worked. He began coaching her three times a week the following year. Soon they were travelling to tournaments.
“He dominated every aspect of my life,” she claimed. “I had entered into a system of terrible fear, of shame and filth and felt very alone. It was a child’s body against the body of an adult. He told me that I had to discover and understand what life was.”
She said the coach had such a sway over her that she never had a boyfriend or went to parties, as other teenagers did.
In 1989 she decided to leave him and to find another coach. She retired from the tour circuit in 1996 and h elped to train Amélie Mauresmo, last year’s Wimbledon champion, from 1999 to 2002.
Demongeot described herself as “haunted” by her experience and, in 2005, after meeting other players with similar stories, decided to press charges.
“Being several of us changed everything for me,” she said. “I could not have faced it alone.”