Andy Murray: I did not know that my mother had been sexually assaulted

Andy Murray has said he did not know about his mother's sexual assault, revealing that he was “angry and upset” when he heard about the incident.

Judy Murray disclosed last month that she had been indecently assaulted by a drunken executive at a function eight years ago.

The former tennis coach wrote in The Sunday Post how a man she was sitting next to thrust his hand down her trousers leaving her "sick to [her] stomach" and "disgusted".

Discussing his mother’s experience for the first time, Murray said that his brother had already been aware of the assault, but that he had not.

“My mum did message me at the time to let me know that there was an article coming out about it,” the two-time Wimbledon champion, 35, told Emma Barnett on Bloomberg. 

“And yeah, I was obviously really upset for her. I was pretty angry, but also I didn't know quite exactly what to say… obviously, I messaged my mum, I called her the following day to talk to her to make sure that she was okay,” he said.

The tennis player said that this is “a familiar story for a lot of women,” adding: “That sort of behaviour shouldn't be tolerated anywhere.”

In the interview ahead of this year’s Wimbledon Championships, the former world No 1 also addressed the decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players from the games amid the war in Ukraine.

He said that his sympathies are “first and foremost… with the people in Ukraine and what they're going through”, although he said he “can appreciate” that the decision might seem unfair to some players unable to compete. 

“In the grand scheme of things, whether some tennis players are not able to play in an event or not, and whether there's ranking points on offer, in the grand scheme of things, is kind of irrelevant,” he