‘Bullying tennis dad wrote L for loser on his daughter’s head’
British court hears of ‘decade of abuse’ for sisters
A TENNIS coach who wanted his daughters to be Wimbledon winners wrote ‘L for loser’ in permanent marker on one of their foreheads, a British court heard yesterday.
John De’Viana is accused of subjecting his daughters Monaei and Nephe to a decade of physical and emotional abuse in a bid to make them the next Williams sisters.
Monaei, who has quit tennis to become an actress, described how her father wrote on her forehead when she was nine.
‘We had a training session and I think I wasn’t performing that well,’ said the 21-year-old.
‘He had written in permanent marker an L on my forehead and shut me in the caravan.’
De’Viana, 55, is said to have sworn and spat at his daughters, branding them a ‘lazy c*** or lazy bitch’ if they did not do well in training, and telling them: ‘You’ll thank me one day because you’ll be rich.’
He is also accused of having beaten and starved them to make them train harder.
The girls’ mother, Michelle Horne, yesterday said her former partner would threaten them, saying if they quit they ‘would be working in Tesco forever’.
Ms Horne added: ‘I remember they would have full rallies when Monaei was three. She didn’t really have any say, she just did what he told her to do. She would often say she didn’t want to train, she was tired and wanted to go home, but he would always convince her to play, and make her play.’
She said she first saw De’Viana hit Monaei when she was five.
‘I saw him acting quite aggressively and angrily, kneeling down,’ she said. ‘He smacked her around the face. I pulled him away from her.’
Both sisters were later pulled out of school for gruelling 13hour training sessions with their
‘I didn’t have any friends’
father, according to Ms Horne.
She said: ‘I would try and encourage the girls to see friends and go to friends’ houses like normal children. He would always say tennis was more important.’
In her police interview, played to the court, Monaei said: ‘I hated him all the time, since forever. I never wanted to play. Tournaments were the worst because there was so much pressure.
‘He just really wanted us to be famous and make money. He was always coach, he was never actually Dad. He was awful to me. I didn’t have any friends.’
She claimed her father, who was a karate expert, attacked her after one tournament, saying: ‘He was hitting me around the head, shaking my head and screaming at me.’
On another occasion she allegedly saw him drag Nephe, then 12, behind a curtain at a sports centre to punch and kick her.
She said: ‘I could hear him hitting her and her crying, but it was muffled because his hand was over her mouth. One time she came out bleeding.’
Nephe, 19, was a poster girl for Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association and featured in adverts with Andy Murray. The sisters say their alleged ordeal ended when their father was thrown out by their mother when Monaei was 16. De’Viana, of Ilford in east London, denies two counts of child cruelty, claiming his daughters made up the allegations against him.