There are stories that chill the blood and that of Paoline Ekambi is part of. Legend of French women’s basketball, the 61-year-old former player with 254 caps with Les Bleues, decided to open up about the hell her father put her through when she was young with her book, My legacy promise (Ed. Amphora). For The Parisianshe returns to the reasons which pushed him to testify: “Since I was a victim of incest, I have been fighting a long battle. I have always written, all my thoughts, my anger, balanced my emotions in a notebook (…) The trigger was a petition, in 2021, in which I discovered figures. More than 6 million French people have declared having been victims of incest, 160,000 children are victims each year.”
Paoline Ekambi made the decision to put her story on paper, helped by journalist Liliane Trévisan. During her childhood, the one who made the heyday of French basketball was the victim of her father’s atrocities. “The violence increased. First the beatings, the humiliations, forced kisses, until rapes on Sunday morning when my mother went to the market. I felt it coming, my instincts were sharpened very early”she tells Parisianbefore discussing the role of his mother: “My mother was cowardly, manipulative. After my father died, I tried to talk with her. She never admitted her mistakes. I felt disgust, I refused to let her touch me. One day, I felt an impulse (she mimes a punch). I had to stop going to see her.”
Paoline Ekambi saved by basketball
Today, both of Paoline Ekambi’s parents have died and the athlete has never been able to have answers to her questions. “What eats me up, what kills me, are the non-answers. I was waiting for my parents to apologize to me, to explain things to me. I’m not saying I would have granted it, but it would have relieved me.”, she explains. Fortunately, basketball was a lifeline for someone who believes that it could have gone very wrong otherwise: “Suicide, scarification, prostitution. All this happens to many victims. I’ve heard of so many who self-destructed. Undead.”
