The Arizona Legislature recently opened a window for survivors of abuse over the age of 30 to file lawsuits through the end of 2020, leading to hundreds of lawsuits against churches and Boy Scout groups, as well as the
Arizona Republic, and the musician Sting. This lawsuit was initially filed in superior court on December 23, shortly before the cutoff.
The plaintiff is unnamed in the lawsuit due to the graphic nature of the allegations, but the lawsuit says she met Hamza when she was 15 through the fencing program at Houston's Rice University, which Hamza would begin to coach the next year.
When they met, Hamza was an internationally recognized fencer who had represented his home country of Egypt in the Olympics twice and was starting out as a coach in Houston. He would go on to coach the Egyptian Olympic fencing team in 2004 and U.S. national fencing teams from 2009 to 2011. In 2009, Houston's mayor declared the day after Christmas “Mauro Hamza Day.”