Former swim coach George Gibney accepts guilt for sexual abuse 50 years ago

By Isabel Hayes and Eimear Dodd

Former Olympian swim coach George Gibney accepts the guilty verdicts of the jury and will not appeal his convictions for sexually abusing young swimmers 50 years ago.

Patrick Gageby SC, defending, told the Central Criminal Court sentence hearing on Monday that Gibney (78) now accepts his guilt.

Gibney was found guilty by a jury of 39 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape of four young swimmers between 1971 and 1981 following a trial last month.

Gibney, of Breakwater Drive, Altamonte Springs, Florida, was extradited from America last year to face the historic allegations against the four complainants. He will be sentenced on October 12.

The abuse took place at various locations including Glenalbyn swimming pool in Stillorgan and Trojans swim club in Newpark Sports Centre, Blackrock, Co Dublin, which Gibney set up to “great excitement” in the community in 1976.
Gibney also abused some of the girls in his car while giving them lifts to and from swim training, in his home when they were

babysitting his children and - in the case of two complainants - in their own homes.

The abuse took the form of kissing, inappropriate touching, digital penetration and forced oral sex.

In relation to the first complainant, Gibney was found guilty of 12 out of 13 counts of indecently assaulting her on dates between 1975 and 1977, with the court hearing he first abused her at a club disco when she was around 13 years' old. At the start of the trial, he pleaded guilty to five counts of indecently assaulting her over a five-month period.

In her victim impact statement, this woman said she had no idea why Gibney entered the guilty pleas in relation to abusing her.

“How do I feel?” she said. “The overwhelming answer is that I feel angry. So angry. I don't feel anger very often but this anger is so primal for what George Gibney did to me 50 years ago and how it has affected my relationships with my family.”

She said going through the trial was a “traumatising and lengthy process” including the press coverage of the trial. She described being referred to as a “witness of the State” at one point. “My God, I am a victim first, a witness for the State second and should be treated as such.”

She said Gibney was a “manipulative, brazen cowardly predator” and that she has suffered “shame, hurt and bewilderment for half a century”.

“It is time to change the law so it respects the dignity and courage of the victims,” she said.

Gibney was further found guilty of two counts of indecently assaulting the second complainant on two occasions between 1974 and 1979 when she was aged 11 and 13 respectively.

This woman read her victim impact statement to the court but requested that her privacy be respected.

The third complainant turned to face Gibney as she read her statement onto the record. She described how he was “hero-worshipped” by the establishment for years while she suffered the effects of his abuse.

The now 63-year-old woman, who was sexually assaulted over a four-year period by Gibney as a small child, told the court she had to carry the abuse for 54 years. He was found of 24 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape.

She said she had to witness him being “feted and lauded by the establishment, hero-worshipped, all while feeling like dying a little bit more every time I saw you, knowing what you did.”

She said that when she finally went to gardaí in 2020, she told them she did not expect anything to come of it and that she never expected him to be charged.

“I wanted an official record of your evilness,” she said. “This was not to be an exercise in futility, but the release and liberation of years of secrets. After you and I were gone from this world, there would be a document of my reality and truth of your degenerate nature.”

She said listening to the prosecution opening speech was “monumental”. “To have the weight of the State behind me was life-affirming. What happened was no longer being swept under the rug.”

“The world is going to know you now as a convicted serial paedophile, while I get to walk out of here free, free of you,” she concluded.

This woman was aged around eight or nine years old when she testified that Gibney started “paying attention” to her. He went on to abuse her over a four-year period, usually after offering her a lift home from swimming. He abused her in his car at a derelict site and in other quiet areas in South County Dublin.

The abuse culminated in his attempting to rape her in a changing room in Newpark in August 1975 when she was aged 12. Her sister was searching for her in the club at the time of the attempted rape but did not enter the changing rooms as they were out of bounds at lunch time, the trial heard.

Gibney was also convicted of the sole count of indecently assaulting the fourth complainant on a date between 1980 and 1981 when she was aged 13.

The court heard he groped her in his car one day before she told him to get his hands off her.

The now 58-year-old woman told the court that she had memories of the lights of Gibney's car approaching her that day and the “glint in his tinted glasses” before he assaulted her.

She said she spent years “living behind the glass walls that undisclosed sexual abuse erects”.

The prosecution said the Director of Public Prosecutions, lie in the upper range of offending due to factors including Gibney’s position of authority and the victims’ ages.

The court was told the maximum sentence for indecent assault at that time was two years. Mr Dwyer said there are no sentencing guidelines for attempted rape, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Prior to the final two victim impact statements being read out, defence counsel said the defence were objecting to sections of the two statements, which he said suggested there were other victims not part of this case.

He said that one of the statements “substantially implies” other offending which was not the subject of an indictment or admitted by his client.

Dwyer submitted that the two statements contained “very minor suggestions” of offending which wasn’t before the court and that the court was capable of filtering out irrelevant material when deciding sentence.

Judge Micheal O’Higgins said the court’s view was that there was “inadmissible material” in these statements, and it would be “preferable” if these were removed and not read onto the court’s record.

He said the court’s view was that this issue should not “upset an important process”, noting that this hearing was an opportunity for the victims to speak of the impact of this “appalling offending” on their lives.

In his plea of mitigation, Mr Gageby said his client was someone “who had achieved some deserved fame in relation to training of persons for high achieving sports”, but his reputation is now “entirely in tatters”.

Gageby asked the court to take into account that his client pleaded to five counts, the passage of time since this offending occurred and Gibney's age and health issues.

He said his client does not receive visits while in custody which is “one of the consequences of his misconduct”.