Ireland’s administration of justice has failed everyone affected by the life and times of the former sports coach George Gibney, including Gibney himself. Now the system has an opportunity to redeem itself by pursuing the current prosecution all the way to a conclusion, having egregiously and repeatedly failed in the past, despite the efforts of some sincerely committed gardaí and lawyers.
This time, he faces 78 charges of indecent assault and one attempted rape of four girls aged between eight and 14 from 1971 to 1981. If he is extradited, he will have the chance to face his accusers in a court of law. And the Irish State may at last pursue charges against him to their conclusion.
The image of the former national and Olympics coach as an all-powerful figure is etched in the minds of numerous swimmers he trained when they were children and adolescents. There was Gibney standing on the bank watching them, blowing his referee’s whistle, determining who would qualify to swim for Ireland and who would not. There was Gibney on the television as RTÉ’s resident expert for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. There was Gibney in and out of government departments sharing his wisdom on State committees.
He moved in the company of cabinet ministers, sports’ top brass and even the odd lofty academic. In Above Water, her memoir of being under his wing from the age of 13, Tric Kearney recalls his “dark eyes” behind tinted glasses and “his teeth visible from within his beard as he grinned”. Now his former young charges have a new image of him – as an old man facing extradition.
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His arrest must have been as counter-intuitive to him as it has seemed counter-cultural to others of us who had given up any expectation of it ever happening. The first attempt to try him on 27 counts of indecency against young swimmers and carnal knowledge of girls under 15 came to naught in 1994 when the Supreme Court allowed his appeal for a review of his case in the High Court. There, he successfully argued that his trial would be prejudiced by the time lapse since the alleged incidents; a legal argument the courts have rejected in subsequent unrelated cases.
At the second attempt, he never even got to set foot in a courtroom. In 1995, after the Sunday Tribune named Gibney as the accused man in the 1994 case, another swimmer contacted gardaí and told them he had allegedly raped her in a hotel room four years earlier. Then three more new complainants came forward, but the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided not to seek his extradition from the US.
Just 20 months ago, when the London Times approached his home in the middle-class neighbourhood of Altamonte Springs, Florida, following reports that a new garda file had been sent to the DPP, his housemate, Pedro Colon, sounded unconcerned. Gibney was innocent, he said. He was being “persecuted”. Asked if he thought Gibney might be arrested, he replied: “No. That’s not going to happen. He’s not going anywhere.”
For over 30 years, he has lived as a free man, coming and going as he pleases without having to face a trial, but, as Chalkie White, the first swimmer to accuse him of sexually abusing him, sees it, Gibney has spent decades constantly “looking over his shoulder”.
That is no way to live. Nor has it been any way to live for his accusers. Over those long years, some have been in and out of hospital, suffered ill health, addiction and marital breakdown. Some have died before they got a chance to readjust their picture of Gibney as a 77-year-old man facing a trial. I think of those who put their faith in the system more than 30 years ago and went to the gardaí. I think of Gibney’s own children who have had to live under the endless cloud of the State’s failure to deliver a verdict.
I think of the sport’s officials who received allegations and turned a blind eye. Of Gary O’Toole, who sacrificed his glittering swimming career when he tried to get the old Irish Amateur Swimming Association (IASA) and its Leinster branch to act upon the allegations. His father, Aidan, who suffered repercussions in his own swimming club in Bray. Bart Nolan, the late retired docker who refused to be silenced about sexual abuse in swimming, even after he was arrested for picketing the association’s annual general meeting. Maureen O’Sullivan, whose constant questions in the Dáil led to a garda review of the allegations before she retired as an independent TD for Dublin Central in 2020. This newspaper’s Johnny Watterson, whose sense of fairness convinced the Sunday Tribune to name Gibney all those years ago. Evin Daly, the child protection advocate in the US, who never let up on the far side of the Atlantic. Reporter Mark Horgan and producer Ciaran Cassidy whose podcast, Where is George Gibney?, led to the fresh garda inquiries underlying the current prosecution.
Irish swimming has had more than its share of turmoil, apart from any allegations concerning Gibney. A statutory report by former judge Roderick Murphy, and a parade of other former coaches before the criminal courts, led to the rebranding of the IASA as Swim Ireland and the implantation of child safeguarding rules.
I think of the swimmers who entered witness stands in different courtrooms to ensure the convictions of Derry O’Rourke, who alternated with Gibney as Ireland’s national and Olympics coach; Ger Doyle, their successor at national level; Ronald Bennett, a priest who ran the Irish division of the World Catholic Games; and Frank McCann, the president of the IASA’s Leinster branch who murdered his wife Esther and their 18-month-old foster daughter, Jessica, in an arson attack on their home in Rathfarnham. And I think of the people who looked the other way every time.
