Vakulenko, former world No. 32, opens up about her coerced romantic relationship with her ex-coach at age 15: "You don’t have a normal life after that"

Former Ukrainian tennis player Julia Vakulenko competed professionally from 1998 to 2010, reaching a career-high ranking of No. 32 in 2007. A finalist at the Quebec tournament that same year, Vakulenko, now 41, has recently broken her silence.

In an interview conducted in French for *L'Équipe*, Julia Vakulenko revealed that she was under the control of her former coach, who forced her into a sexual relationship in Spain when she was just 15 years old.

She shared her testimony for about ten minutes with the French media, detailing everything her ex-coach subjected her to on a daily basis.

"I was born in Yalta, Ukraine, during the Soviet era. I started playing tennis at the age of 7. I became champion in U12 and U14 competitions in Yugoslavia, but the war caused a lot of stress.

Due to the context of the time and the difficulty of training, we sought to go abroad, and I eventually found a sponsor who funded me to attend an academy. We moved to Barcelona, Spain, when I was 15. At first, I trained with the girls, but since I was the best in the group, I moved to train with the boys.

There was a coach who occasionally took a group to work with them. Since I was performing well, he noticed me. He saw that I had potential and started training me more and more. I had received a wild card to participate in the Roland-Garros Junior tournament.

My mother didn’t know this world; she preferred to delegate to someone else. My former coach, on the other hand, told me he knew everything, and he was the one who accompanied me and decided that we would share a hotel room. His control over me began at that moment.

When I lost, he lay down with me. He started caressing and hugging me. I didn’t understand; I was a child, and I saw him as a mentor. We’re taught that in adult-child relationships, we must obey.

He was in his forties, but he had a wife and two children. He told me he was in love with me and that I would become a champion. I always had to obey him. In the end, I was his possession, when I think about it. He decided everything, even in our sexual relationship. You don’t have a normal life after that. It was manipulation, and it lasted until I was 18.

For a long time, I didn’t know how to get out of this relationship. I came to Spain to play tennis, but things didn’t go as planned. I had my mother, but I didn’t dare tell her anything because we also depended on the sponsor.

If I stopped, I had no one else to continue tennis. He managed to isolate me from everyone; he created a mental dependency. I wasn’t allowed to talk to others.

I didn’t see a way out of all this. Everything that happened wasn’t normal, but I couldn’t see an escape. I intentionally fractured my hand to take a break and end things with him. I just wanted to move on and stay 'alive,' in a way. There were days when morning came, and I didn’t want to get up.

Since I was a pretty girl, I didn’t like myself. I kept thinking, 'Why is this happening to me?' I almost fell into depression. I didn’t want to play tennis anymore, have coaches, and I wondered if I should quit tennis altogether. The travel, the coaches… It was all negative, and I lost confidence in myself. To win, you have to love yourself, and I couldn’t.

I didn’t accept this part of my life. I didn’t want to be known anymore because I was ashamed of myself. When I ended my career and started a family, I refused to talk about my tennis career, and I didn’t want to watch tennis on TV because, to me, it was a failure," she explained.