Two people involved in efforts to prosecute swimming coach George Gibney (77) in the 1990s have expressed their relief at his conviction this week for child sex abuse.
On Monday, a jury in the Central Criminal Court found Gibney guilty of 39 counts of indecent assault and one of attempted rape, between 1971 and 1981, at various locations including Glenalbyn swimming pool in Stillorgan, Dublin and the Trojan swim club in Newpark Sports Centre in Blackrock, also on the southside of Dublin.
The abuse also took place in Gibney’s car while he was giving his female victims lifts to and from swimming training, in his home when they were babysitting his children and – in the case of two complainants – in their homes. The victims were aged between 11 and 13 years at the time.
Former Irish swimming champion Chalkie White, a complainant in the prosecution case taken against Gibney in the 1990s that collapsed after a Supreme Court challenge, welcomed this week’s conviction, which he said he “100 per cent thought would never happen”.
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After the collapse of the attempt to prosecute Gibney in the 1990s, the former Olympic swimming coach moved abroad.
Gibney fled first to a swimming club in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then to the US, where he moved to Colorado initially before finally settling in Orlando, Florida.
‘It was the worst thing I had ever imagined in my whole life. I had nightmares for years afterwards. I don’t think I actually smiled for a long time’
— Swimming coach Carole Walsh on discovering George Gibney's abuse
Gibney was extradited from the US last year after four new complainants came forward to gardaí in the wake of the Where is George Gibney? podcast, made by Second Captains in partnership with the BBC.
“I am so grateful to those girls who came forward,” White says.
“He’s now a convicted paedophile ... People who spoke out and weren’t believed can now be believed. And that is really important.”
White was abused by Gibney when he was aged 11 and Gibney, then starting out on his coaching career, was in his late teens.
For years, White felt it was a case of “here we go again” when people tried to renew the effort to bring Gibney to justice.
“If this had fallen apart, it would have been the depths of despair for a lot of people,” he says.
The new complainants “are our saviours”, White says. They “gave us hope, did something about it, actually stood up and were brave enough”.
White says he took comfort over the years from the work of journalists who ensured that Gibney was “always looking over his shoulder” and was never able to relax, no matter where he went.
“But the thought of him being arrested, and convicted, and sentenced, and being sent off to jail – I really didn’t think that would happen,” says White.
“It was like [the idea of] utopia. But maybe we are now realising a little bit of it [utopia] and I can tell you it is a little bit better than I thought it would be.”
White said the conviction did not mean he would forget Gibney and what had happened to him.
“You don’t wipe those things out of your mind. But I will be in a better place to manage it,” he said.
Carole Walsh, a swimming coach who had worked alongside Gibney, had then worked with Gibney’s victims when they began to speak out about him in the 1990s. She says she had been “devastated” when the first effort to bring him to justice had collapsed.
“I had listened to all those kids, all the things that had happened to them. It was the worst thing I had ever imagined in my whole life. I had nightmares for years afterwards. I don’t think I actually smiled for a long time,” she says.
“All those kids that I knew, I felt had entrusted to me their hopes and their aspirations, and knowing that I had fed them to a f**king animal ... It was awful.”
What has now happened, she says, is an “incredible achievement” and was the work both of those who had come forward years ago and those who came forward in the wake of the podcast.
“I’d love to see them get together and realise that they did it. They all did it ... the new ones and the old ones. They all did it,” she says.
Over the years, she says, she has had people coming up to her and telling her what they knew about Gibney when he was a high-profile coach in Ireland.
“And I’m like: why didn’t you just say it? Why didn’t you come forward and say it? You had your kids in the club. You should have come forward and said what was happening.”
Gibney is in custody awaiting a sentencing hearing on July 29th.
