Serena Williams’ half-sister reveals how dad ‘left mom to bring up six kids alone’ but would ‘love to meet’ her siblings
RICHARD Williams told his eldest daughter Sabrina, eight, he was going out to buy her a bike before walking out of the door, never to return, leaving wife Betty to raise their six children.
Just a few years later, Richard started a new life with another woman and had two girls, Serena and Venus, who went onto become tennis legends.
Now speaking for the first time about the famous Williams dynasty, Sabrina - a trainee chaplain - is telling all about her heartbreaking childhood.
Despite growing up estranged from her dad and famous sisters - she says she still has a lot of love for her family and hopes one day they can all meet and put the past behind them.
But the 55-year-old feels now is the time to tell the truth about dad Richard, whom she says was a serial philanderer, and how she may have numerous secret brothers and sisters across the US.
“I know there’s more siblings, I was told between fifteen and nineteen all over the place, from LA to Louisiana," she told SunOnline.
"My mom always argued with my dad about his affairs, he was a serial cheat. I remember that was always the main thing they’d talk about.
"He is a selfish man, lives only for himself, he just uses his kids to get what he needs. He’s not a dad, he was just a sperm donor. He had five kids, and left them to my mom to grow up in poverty, and never once helped.”
This previously untold story starts in Los Angeles, where Richard, now 77, was living with his then wife, Betty Johnson. She had one child from another relationship, Katrina Jones, 61, and they had five more - eldest Sabrina, Richard III, 53, Ronner, 52, Reluss, 51, and Reneeka, 49.
"I had two childhoods, the childhood from one to eight was fantastic," Sabrina recalled.
"I remember my dad being there, we didn’t want for anything. When I was with my dad, I was very happy.
"But my mom and dad did fight a lot, I won’t lie. The last fight I remember, my mum hit my dad with a frying pan as he was being aggressive to her and she was tired of it.
"I was eight when my dad left and said he was getting a bike for me and that’s the last I saw of him. My mom told me later that he’s never coming back. We went from having everything to nothing. The best dresses, parties, we’d go places. Now there was no new shoes or clothes. I thought I was dad’s favorite and he loved me to death.
"But once he left, within a year, we became very poor. There wasn’t always meals on the table. We went downhill. My mom became stressed out with six kids, trying to provide for us, she became aggressive."
His desertion hit the family very hard.
"I just learnt that if I stayed in my room, and kept the house clean, I wouldn’t get my a** beat," she said.
"It would be with anything my mom could find - the ironing chord, a hanger, I learnt not to annoy her.
"In my teens, I was always thinking about suicide, I tried it once, it was always with me, and it was about my dad, I had mental health issues.
"I remember that she hit me one time with her ring and it bruised my eye. I said, ‘I’m done’, and moved out. I lived in my car for six or seven months, I was 20 or 21, I just couldn’t take anymore."
Over the course of their childhood, Sabrina remembers Richard turning up just once at the doorstep when she was ten and then spoke to him again at college.
"Somehow I got hold of my dad through a relative and asked for $1,000 to pay some of the college bill at Hope Christian University," she said.
"He said he’d only give me the money as a loan. That's when I knew he was an a**hole.
"After college, I was done with my dad. He had never paid any child support and all he wanted to give me was a loan."
Sabrina flitted in and out of jobs in her twenties in social and probation services, but struggled to contain her anger, one time pulling a gun on her cousin.
"I hated being like him. I was angry and bitter and I had to come to terms with my life," she said.
It was around this time, Sabrina was hearing about her much younger half-sisters Serena, 37, and Venus, 39, who were making their mark as tennis juniors.
"Everything around them was always hush-hush. If ever I was round at a relative’s house, it would be all quiet, like I was a spy. I think they did that as I was my dad’s first child, they didn’t want me to know what was really going on," she says.
To save face with friends, she’d pretend they all got along.
Sabrina added: “I'd say I was still in contact with my dad, we went on vacations, but it was a lie. The unwritten law in our family: you don’t speak bad about the girls, who were then living in Compton.
"I didn’t meet Serena and Venus until I bumped into them by complete chance at Knott’s Berry Farm, a theme park in California, when they were teenagers. I was with my work colleagues and I saw him and thought: 'Hey, that looks like my dad'.”
"I went over, we exchanged hellos, and we hung out for an hour, that was it. He gave me his number and told me to call him, then guess what? The number he gave me was of order.
"But I always made excuses for him - maybe he couldn’t pay the bill. Another time, I got the number off my brother and, then after one or two calls, the line went dead.
"I always believed in my heart that my dad would come back to get me. I think I was really disappointed my dad didn’t choose me."
Soon after, her mom Betty was diagnosed with breast cancer, which then spread to other parts of her body, and she needed more expensive medical care than what her insurance offered.
Sabrina said: "My mom died on December 14th 1998. She had cancer and other serious health issues. She needed some medication for the cancer, and it was too expensive for her to pay for it. I reached out to my dad, but I couldn’t get hold of him.
"He had no interest whether she was dead or alive. It was utterly mind-numbing that my dad couldn’t even come to my mom’s funeral."
She would hear from her dad every now and then, but it was after having the first of two sons - Elijah, now 21, then Solomon two years later - that their relationship completely broke down.
"My siblings called me and said that dad is at Indian Wells with the girls playing in a tournament and he wants to speak to you.
"When he called, I said: ‘What do you need, dad?’ He said: ‘I love you.’
"No you don’t, what do you want? Don't try this love thing.
"The girls are playing here, why don’t you come down, you’ll get the good seats, see the girls, then the reporters can take the pictures.
"It was typical him, he wanted to make it a PR opportunity, but I never wanted to meet the girls for publicity or money, only in private.
"I then told him that I’d just had my first boy Elijah. ‘You have a grandson, you know?’ He said: ‘What?’ I said: ‘I have a son.’ He said: ‘I don’t care about your kids.'
“It's sad for my boys. My kid Elijah blew off a scholarship in tennis because of Venus and Serena, he was a great player, but had a lot of pressure. They say that granddad’s crazy, they’re sad that they don’t see Venus and Serena, but I tell them it’s not personal."
While her sisters have risen to sporting fame, earning colossal fortunes, Sabrina insists she is not bitter and doesn’t want money from them.
However she says it does hurt that the siblings from the Williams' sisters' mother Oracene Price’s first marriage - Isha and Lyndrea - are often seen on the tennis circuit and showbiz parties, yet the Williams side are always absent.
"I would sometimes see Venus and Serena on the front of a magazine and think: ‘Where's my daddy?’ But I always kept my opinion quiet,” she said.
Sabrina added: "If you put me and Serena side-by-side, we look identical.
"I think they’ve done fantastic, they have a lot of pressure from the black community to be role models.
"I love them as the blood in my family, but I don’t respect some of their decisions. If you were about the family, what about your other siblings?
"If you cared about the world and everything you stand for, then why is your other half-siblings on the cover of Vogue with your baby - and the Williams side of the family aren’t?"
Sabrina now has an internet radio show on mental health and social issues called Rolling with the Diva and is devoted to the Church.
She says: "I am training to be a chaplain, I want to go around the world and help other people.
“I'm telling this story as I’m coming to a difficult time in my life with health problems.”
Although she struggles to forgive her dad, she says she still loves him, and is holding out an olive branch to her famous half-siblings.
"No matter what comes from speaking out, I’ll never stop loving my dad, I’d just like to have a cup of coffee with him, have closure and then he can walk away if he wants," she said.
"But I don’t think I’ll see him. It’s heartbreaking, I want to show him that his eldest daughter has done amazing things, I want him to say well done, but I know he won’t," Sabrina says.
"In the last year and a half, I’ve now started watching my sisters on TV. As their eldest sister I’m proud of them, it’s a mega-feat what they’ve done.
"I truly believe that because I’ve never been bitter, tried to go for the money, that we can meet somewhere. I believe we have time to do that, I hold onto that hope.
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"I love all my siblings, including Venus and Serena, but does it hurt that they haven’t got in touch? Yeah, you bet it does. They know I exist. I’m his first born, he left us, but no one remembers that in the Williams story.
"I hope this will open the doors to a meeting."
SunOnline reached out to representatives of the Williams family for comment.
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