Serena and Venus’ sister calls dad a ‘sperm donor’ who abandoned first family — the elder half-sister of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams — is calling out their father, Richard Williams, for abandoning his family and moving on to start a new life with the athletes’ mother, Oracene Price.
Sabrina Williams claims her father was a serial cheater whom she believes has several children scattered across the country, telling The Sun, “I know there’s more siblings, I was told between fifteen and nineteen all over the place, from LA to Louisiana.”
“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,” she added. “He’s not a dad, he was just a sperm donor.”
The 56-year-old explained that Richard, 78, was first married to her mother, Betty Johnson, who had one daughter from a previous relationship, Katrina Jones, 62. The couple then had five children together, including eldest Sabrina, Richard III, 54, Ronner, 53, Reluss, 52, and Reneeka, 50.
When Sabrina was eight, she claims Richard abandoned the family after telling her he was going to the store to buy her a bicycle.
“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, she continued. “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.”
As Sabrina’s mother turned abusive, she only recalls hearing from her father twice after he moved out, including once when she was 10 and a second time while she was in college.
“In my teens, I was always thinking about suicide,” Sabrina admitted. “I tried it once, it was always with me, and it was about my dad, I had mental health issues. 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. 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,” she added. “He had never paid any child support and all he wanted to give me was a loan.”
The trainee chaplain didn’t meet Venus, 40, and Serena, 39, until the sisters were in their teens at a Los Angeles theme park.
“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 [out] of order.”
Mother Betty was later diagnosed with cancer, passing away in December 1998.
“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.”
As for Venus and Serena, Sabrina says she’s proud of everything they’ve accomplished, but feels they should’ve attempted to reach out to their siblings on Richard’s side, just as they have with their half-siblings from their mother’s side of the family.
“I love them as the blood in my family, but I don’t respect some of their decisions,” the mother of two shared. “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?”
Despite their tumultuous relationship, Sabrina hopes she and her father can someday bury the hatchet.
“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.
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.”
She also believes she and her famous sisters will one day be able to reunite, adding, “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.”
