‘I was raped 400 times’: French tennis player Angelique Cauchy reveals the hell she endured at the hands of her coach when she was 12 and how he convinced her she had AIDS until she was 18
- Coach Andrew Geddes was sentenced to 18 years for raping four girls aged between 12 and 17
French tennis player Angelique Cauchy has revealed how when she was 12 she was raped hundreds of times by her coach, who also convinced her that she had AIDS until she was 18.
When testifying before the French Parliament, the former tennis player recounted her terrible experience with coach Andrew Geddes, who in 2021 was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the rape and sexual assault of four young people between the ages of 12 and 17.
During the trial, the court heard about the brutal sexual abuse committed by the 55-year-old man, who often recorded without permission, at his home, in his car or at the tennis club.
Cauchy, now 36, began working with Geddes at the Sarcelles Tennis Club, Paris, in 1999, when she was 12 and France’s second junior player.
A few months later he took advantage of her innocence and told her: “You know, sometimes it happens in relationships between coach and student, we spend a lot of time together, it’s normal.”
Angelique Cauchy (pictured testifying in the French parliament) revealed how when she was 12 she was raped 400 times by her coach.
What began with Geddes taking her to watch Paris Saint-Germain FC play at their stadium, the relationship quickly became abusive and over two years, Cauchy said he raped her 400 times.
He then told in harrowing detail to the Palacio Borbón how he raped her three times a day over a two-week period at a training camp.
‘I lived the worst two weeks of my life. I thought many times about committing suicide. She raped me three times a day. The first night she asked me to go to her room and I didn’t, then she went into mine. I was in prison,’ she said.
She described how he had manipulated her so much that she began voluntarily visiting his room at night.
“The next nights, it seems crazy, but I went there alone and took those thirteen steps that separated me from his room,” she explained.
Geddes then emotionally manipulated and deceived Ms. Cauchy, convincing her that he had given her AIDS.
‘He came to tell me one day: ‘I have AIDS, that’s for sure, I told you.’ In the late 90s it was something that scared me much more than it does now, it paralyzed me. I lived from the age of 13 to 18 thinking I had AIDS. But he lied to me, just to destroy me. Maybe it was even more destructive than rape,” he said. France information.
To make matters even worse, when a member of the tennis club complained about Geddes’ predatory and abusive behavior, the club president allegedly responded: “Yes, but it brings us titles.”
Following these revelations, an investigation was launched in July to examine “operational failures within sports federations, the sports movement and governing bodies.” Following testimonies presented this summer at Le Palais Bourbon, the report is expected to be published in December.
