Three years of marriage and a house in Anglet, acquired in 2014: Amélie Mauresmo and her wife Marie-Bénédicte Hurel seemed, until now, to be in perfect love.
Since then, the marital dream has turned into a nightmare.
The tennis champion has indeed filed for divorce in 2023. Before filing a complaint against his wife, whom she accuses of harassment, France Bleu revealed on Wednesday January 24.
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The director of the Roland-Garros tournament, also the mother of two children - a boy named Aaron born in 2015 and a girl called Ayla, born in 2017, from her past relationship with Pascale Arribe - became a civil party during a trial behind closed doors, which was held on Tuesday January 23 before the correctional chamber of the Bayonne judicial court.
During the hearing
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the 44-year-old former tennis glory claimed to “live hell” every day.
In question ?
The multiple humiliations, blackmail and insults, including by SMS, that his wife would subject him to.
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A new companion
To the point that Amélie Mauresmo would sometimes take refuge with her new companion, a “surfer from Biarritz”, indicated France Bleu.
The former tennis player was also prescribed a total incapacity for work (ITT) of ten days.
Marie-Bénédicte Hurel, for her part, was placed in police custody at the Biarritz police station in September 2023. Three months later, the trial took place behind closed doors “due to facts which fall within the private sphere and of the public personality of Amélie Mauresmo,” explained her lawyer Me Laurie Delpont.
The denial of Marie-Bénédicte Hurel
Marie-Bénédicte Hurel, for her part, categorically denies the facts.
“The contested text messages do not amount to harassment at all, but a simple discussion on daily management,” underlined Me Thierry Sagardoytho, the sixty-year-old’s lawyer.
“No one heard such comments,” he added regarding the alleged insults denounced by Amélie Mauresmo.
The lawyer also deplored the “instrumentalization of an artificial complaint in the perspective of divorce”.
The defense thus pleaded for the pure and simple release of Marie-Bénédicte Hurel.
At the end of a three-hour hearing, the prosecution nevertheless requested a ten-month suspended prison sentence against the latter.
It was also decided that the judgment would be delivered on February 13.