RISE OUT OF ABUSE
JELENA DOKIC HAS REVEALED THE VIOLENCE SHE SUFFERED AT THE HANDS OF HER UNSTABLE FATHER ON THE WOMEN’S TENNIS TOUR
Jelena Dokic feels liberated. While never fully healing her wounds, the former tennis star’s incredible tell-all book has allowed her to at least exorcise some of her demons.
The demons that came with being raised by the tennis dad from hell.
Until the release of her autobiography,
Unbreakable, this week, Dokic had never revealed the extent of the shocking mental and physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her infamous father.
Damir Dokic wanted his daughter to be the best tennis player in the world – at any cost.
Most harrowing is the revelation of the beatings she suffered when failing to perform to the levels he demanded. It would often mean being whipped by his belt – something she has detailed in graphic fashion.
“My losing particularly sends my father into a rage,” the one-time US Open junior champion writes. “I rarely lose but when I do the consequence is brutal … now often a belt-whipping. I can see he has decided slapping and hitting me are not enough of a punishment.
“It hurts a lot less when you have your shirt on and that’s why he makes me take it off. I stand in my bra, my back to him, and he orders me not to move as he hits me. Often he almost slices my skin with the belt.”
Jelena was once beaten so badly after a defeat she lost consciousness.
“I’ve never really told my side of the story, never really spoken about anything in my life,” Jelena, now 34, tells Weekend.
“But I always knew I would. I knew I would go out there at some stage and tell my story. It was something that was really important to me, something that I wanted to do for a while.
“It’s not that I was running away from it. “It’s just that it’s such a complex story… there’s so many parts to my life and I think it needed to be said together.
“A book was the perfect way.”
Jelena was also twice a refugee, fleeing war-torn Croatia with her family for her father’s homeland, Serbia, when she was seven, before ultimately arriving in Australia.
In the book, she recalls the time she saw her first dead body.
But despite such a confronting early childhood growing up in eastern Europe, nothing would compare to the personal horrors at home, particularly through her teenage years after the family moved to Sydney in 1994.
Damir’s aggressive nature was apparent to the wider tennis community not long after Jelena burst on to the scene as a 16-year- old rising star of the women’s game in 1999.
He was ejected from Wimbledon in 2000 for smashing a journalist’s mobile phone, kicked out of the US Open later that year for taking exception to the price of fish in the players’ lounge, and booted from the Australian Open in 2001 after accusing organisers of rigging the draw.
He would ultimately be banned from the women’s tour for six months.
Few were aware of the extent of his wrath, however, and the painful impact it had on his daughter.
“People assume they know everything, know what’s going on,” Jelena says.
“You never really know what’s going on behind closed doors.”
Being behind those closed doors was a living nightmare for Jelena.
She also claimed Damir would pull her hair or ears, hit her with shoes, spit in her face, and call her names like “whore’’.
Jelena writes, “It’s weird but the better I play, the worse he seems to get. He continues to drink at tournaments. On rare occasions when I’m runner-up, he takes my ‘losing trophy’ and smashes it.”
The abuse would lead to her contemplating suicide to escape the torment.
“In a way it was really liberating to write it,” she tells Weekend of the book, co-authored by journalist Jessica Halloran.
“But at the end it’s such a difficult process going through all the drafts, and editing. “I had to read it about 10 or 15 times.
“It was very hard at times, because you constantly had to go over and over the really difficult parts, the really hard times.
“Parts of it were a relief to get it out, but also at times it was emotionally draining.”
Jelena says one of the hardest incidents to have to recall was when her father abandoned her at Wimbledon in 2000.
She was 17, and had just lost a semi-final to American star Lindsay Davenport.
Not happy with the result, Damir left her at the courts and refused to allow her to return to the hotel room she was actually paying for.
In Unbreakable she writes of the exchange following the defeat. “The dull slur in his slow, loud voice tells me he is drunk. I know this tone; it’s the tone of white wine and probably a few glasses of whisky. He is angry. Furious that I lost. His voice booms down the phone. ‘ You are pathetic, you are a hopeless cow, you are not to come home. You are an embarrassment. You can’t stay at our hotel.”
A year earlier at London’s All-England club, Jelena caused one of the biggest upsets in women’s tennis when as a 16-year- old qualifier she beat then world No.1 Martina Hingis.
It was the first of nine occasions she would defeat a current and former top-ranked player.
Jelena herself briefly reached No.4 in the world in 2002 – after being made by her father to turn her back on Australia and play for Yugoslavia. A short time later, he made her play for Serbia. But despite tour earnings topping $6 million, she would never reach her full potential.
“I could’ve won a grand slam and maybe been No.1 … certainly I could’ve been a regular top five player and certainly had a much longer career,” she says.
“Once you read the book … you kind of understand why I struggled in my career.
“It was very hard to focus with so many things going on.
“It’s good to be on tour and playing this professional sport, especially at the elite level.
“But that (distraction of her father’s behaviour) was what cost me my career a little bit.
“It is what it is. It’s what I’ve had to deal with. I can’t change it.
“I wish I had the maturity that I had today.”
Following Jelena’s revelations Tennis Australia confirmed officials at the time had reported concerns about her welfare to police, but “without cooperation from those directly involved, unfortunately it could not be fully investigated”.
The sport’s governing body did add in a statement that it was now “working closely with the Australian Childhood Foundation to strengthen the safeguarding of children across the sport”.
Jelena finally escaped Damir’s clutches in 2005 when she returned to Australia and pledged allegiance once again to her adopted country.
While enduring a stop-start playing career, she had an on-again, off-again relationship with her father in those later years on the circuit.
Jelena said she didn’t “hate” her father for the years of abuse, but had no desire to remain close to him and settled in Melbourne.
Damir remains in Serbia, where he was arrested in 2009 for threatening to blow up the Australian ambassador. He spent almost a year behind bars.
“There really isn’t much of a relationship,” Jelena says. “I tried to kind of make it work a few times. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
“We don’t have the same views, we are very different people.
“It’s very hard to communicate with him. It’s hard to even talk to someone who doesn’t ever think they do anything wrong … to even say ‘sorry’.
“I’ve accepted that’s how it has to be and you’ve just got to move on.”
Jelena just hopes her story can be a valuable lesson for others.
“It’s about speaking out and helping people … if it can help one person out there, it’s worth it.”
“I T HURTS A LOT LESS WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR SHIRT ON AND THAT’S WHY HE MAKES ME TAKE I T OFF. I STAND I N MY BRA, MY BACK TO HIM, AND HE ORDERS ME NOT TO MOVE AS HE HITS ME.”