Why didn't someone do something?

Since interviews with former tennis champion Jelena Dokic and extracts from her biography Unbreakable hit the headlines, it is the first and most obvious question.

The whippings with a leather belt after poor training sessions. The taunts of "slut" and "whore" by an enraged father to his 11-year-old daughter after she had lost some insignificant under-age tennis tournament.

The kicking and hair pulling and other horrendous acts of abuse that are shocking, yet also sadly unsurprising to anyone who has been close to the sometimes brutal world of teenage tennis.

Surely someone knew? Surely someone could have stopped this? Why didn't we save young Jelena Dokic?

The answer is at once simple and gut-wrenchingly complex.

It is also the source of anguish — and, I suspect, some misgivings — for Australian tennis authorities who must reconcile their inability, and perhaps even unwillingness, to intervene in an awful situation.

Tennis Australia (TA) knew something was wrong. Of course they did.

Damir Dokic's behaviour created concerns in the sports world. ( Reuters )

As a sports writer who regularly covered the grand slam tournaments throughout Dokic's career, we all knew something was wrong with the Dokic family.

Even if our suspicions did not touch the surface of the horrendous abuse now revealed.

The erratic, often drunken public outbursts of Damir Dokic created obvious concerns.

So too the haunted look on Jelena's face as she mouthed conspiracy theories about rigged draws or corrupt officials that clearly sprang from the warped imagination of her manipulative father.

When Dokic achieved almost instant notoriety by reaching the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 2000 aged just 16, the rumours began to circulate.

The most common allegation was of an incident at a country tournament where — in the words of a source — Jelena was "bounced off the walls (of her motel room)" by her father after losing a match. This was supposedly heard by a coach in an adjoining room.

I can remember three separate occasions when myself, or a colleague, raised this allegation with TA. The response was similar to that given by TA on Sunday after the release of Dokic's book.

"There were many in tennis at the time who were concerned for Jelena's welfare, and many who tried to assist with what was a difficult family situation," the statement said.

"Some officials even went as far as lodging police complaints, which without cooperation from those directly involved, unfortunately could not be fully investigated."

The unofficial version of this statement was this: "We've heard all the stories. But if Jelena doesn't speak up, we can't do anything."

In the light of Dokic's revelations this light-footed approach seems unjustifiable, even unforgivable.

But whether through intimidation or misplaced loyalty, at the time of her abuse Dokic was in her father's thrall. Attempts by authorities and media to verify rumours of abuse were stonewalled.

Jelena Dokic might have been a victim of success-starved Australia's craving for another tennis superstar. ( AAP: Dave Hunt )

It is the same nexus that stops so many cases of domestic abuse reaching the courts. Whether this was a reason or an excuse for the various local and global tennis authorities failing to intervene rests on the conscience of those involved.

It is question that the WTA, the umbrella body of women's tennis that lives in fear of powerful agents, parents and players, and fiercely protects its commercial reputation, might ask itself. About Dokic and some others.

Naively some observers deflected blame and suggested — even in print — that Dokic should distance herself from her father.

But how many teenage girls growing up in a foreign country in a dysfunctional family and living the notoriously lonely life of the tennis professional could simply leave?

Those telling Dokic to walk away weren't asking her to sack a coach or an agent, but her family. Sadly it would take several years before she would be able to do so, and only then at a severe financial and emotional cost.

As much as she was a victim of her father's manic ambition, Dokic might also have been a victim of success-starved Australia's craving for another tennis superstar.

When Dokic hit the scene Australia was struggling to relive past tennis glories in a new era in which Europe had a conveyer belt of top-line talent.

Jelena Dokic represented a new source of potential for Australian tennis. ( Reuters: Toby Melville )

Dokic represented a new source of potential, the children of migrants who, so the stereotype had it, were willing to work harder than "Aussie kids" — or, as often, were ordered to do so by ambitious parents.

As one Tennis Australia official admitted during Dokic's early days: "If you want the best kids, you have to put up with the parents."

The question TA has asked itself subsequently is just how much was it willing to endure from these parents, and how much did it ignore, in order to restore Australia's tennis fortunes?

If the media is culpable it is for using Damir Dokic as a punchline in our jokes about pushy parents.

Whether lying drunk on the road outside a tournament, parading around Wimbledon wearing a Union Jack or quite literally disputing the price of fish in the players' lounge at the US Open, he was portrayed as an oafish buffoon.

Even after Dokic had touched on her abuse in earlier interviews, reporters rang him regularly and published his incoherent rant.

This was irresponsible in the way affording the racists thugs who heckled Sam Dastyari in a pub a public hearing was irresponsible. It gave an abusive figure a legitimacy he did not deserve.

Now anyone who watched Jelena Dokic's tragedy unfold must concede a harsh truth or consign the next endangered prodigy to the same fate: We should have done more.