Former Tunisian tennis player Selima Sfar on Tuesday accused her former coach Regis de Camaret of repeatedly raping her from the age of 12.

Sfar went public about her sexual abuse for the first time in an interview for the French sports daily L'Equipe.

"When I was 12 and a half, I was abused by Regis de Camaret... for almost three years," the now 46-year-old told the newspaper.

Camaret was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2014 for raping two underage girls at a training camp that he ran in the Mediterranean resort of Saint Tropez in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In the interview for L'Equipe, Sfar recounted the first time Camaret had abused her in his car on the way back to his home after picking her up at Bordeaux airport.

"I was paralysed, I couldn't move," she said.

"We continued on the road and arrived at his house late. Upstairs was his daughter and his room, I slept on the sofa bed downstairs. I went to bed and an hour or two later I woke up while he was touching me. Then it went from touching to rape, very quickly," she explained.

Sfar, whose career lasted from 1993 to 2008 and who joined the WTA top 100 in 2001, said she had never dared speak out before.

"It took me 25 years to admit it to myself, 35 years to talk about it publicly," she expressed.