Editor’s Note
This testimony from Angélique Cauchy, who survived sexual abuse by her coach as a young athlete, is a powerful call to action for safeguarding minors in sports. Her decision to share her story underscores the urgent need for systemic change and support for survivors.
Victim of sexual violence when she was a young tennis player, Angélique Cauchy now dedicates her life to the protection of minors in sports.
Raped, assaulted, and humiliated by her tennis coach from the ages of 12 to 14, Angélique Cauchy has made the protection of minors in sports her fight. Now 37 years old, she has just published a book in which she recounts her hell in order to finally free herself and ensure that no other child experiences such trauma.
Angélique Cauchy’s story is contained in a 315-page book. Words one imagines were typed frantically on her computer keyboard, almost in one go, to get rid of them. They recount the hold her tennis coach had over her, the numerous rapes, the humiliations he made her endure on the court when she was just a child, and the silence of those who witnessed it and said nothing.
At 37, a mother to a little boy named Milo aged 4 and a half, Angélique Cauchy is only just freeing herself from
, she confides. Speaking out, as she has been doing for a few years, acts as therapy for her, and the release of her autobiographical account (“If One Day Someone Hurts You”, Ed. Stock) on October 9th is a new milestone in her reconstruction.
Her hell begins in September 1999. Angélique is 12 years old. A prodigious tennis player, ranked number 2 in the junior category, she joins the Sarcelles tennis club, one of the best in the Val d’Oise. It is here that she meets her future tormentor: the recently appointed sports director, Andrew Geddes, who would also coach her younger sister.
The first time she sees him,
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, she says. The sports coach shouts at some students but is very friendly towards her. Aware of the lack of recognition the teenager suffers from, he comes to fill her emotional voids. At the next training session, Andrew Geddes teaches her to juggle with her racket to pick up the ball and flatters her potential. He reportedly told her:
, recounts Angélique, who recalls the context of the time.
Angélique Cauchy
Former tennis player
The hold takes hold in barely three months. Andrew Geddes invites the teenager to attend a match of her favorite football team, PSG. Once, twice, and then, he ends up proposing that she stay overnight at his place, 30 km from the family home, to avoid the back-and-forth trips.
Angélique’s parents trust the coach. Once, her mother even accompanied him to a medical appointment, as if he were family.
, Angélique acknowledges today.
At the coach’s request, who had demanded that Angélique keep him informed of her match results, the parents bought their daughter a mobile phone. Andrew Geddes regularly calls the player, during the day and in the evening.
, she writes in her autobiography, written in the style of a childhood diary.
The first sexual abuses take place in the privacy of the sports coach’s apartment. When he receives Angélique, Geddes first sleeps on the sofa, then joins her in her bed, asks for a hug. Through her child’s eyes, these situations seem strange. The young girl then thinks that
Angélique Cauchy
At 12, Angélique is vulnerable, intimidated by the authority of this man who exerts a psychological ascendancy over her. According to her, he told her:
On the court, Andrew Geddes is sometimes encouraging, sometimes humiliating.
Angélique Cauchy has gathered her memories in a book “for all the children” who have experienced, are experiencing, or could avoid experiencing the same thing she did.