Allegations of sexual abuse associated with New Ross poll are devastating for Irish swimming. What has been done since previous scandals to protect young swimmers, asks Johnny Watterson.
Just over 10 years ago international swimmer Gary O'Toole, accompanied by his father, Aidan, knocked on the door of the office of the Leinster branch of the then Irish Amateur Swimming Association (IASA). O'Toole had requested to speak to officials about a matter that he believed was of pressing urgency.
At that time the young medical student and European silver medallist was the most important Irish swimmer and the sport's only publicly recognisable face. He was there to pass on formally information he had come by and to express his outrage at the behaviour of former Olympic coach (for the 1988 Games) and his own coach, George Gibney.
During the meeting, O'Toole told the officials that a swimmer had confided in him during a swimming trip abroad that Gibney had sexually abused him.
As well as O'Toole and his father, there was a third person at the meeting. This person was the husband of a woman who had been seriously abused as a young swimmer, and he too outlined Gibney's crimes against his wife.
O'Toole wanted to know what the Leinster branch would do to prevent Gibney having any contact with children pending an investigation and how the parent body, IASA, was going to respond. Unknown to O'Toole at the time was the extent of Gibney's activities. Gibney had been raping young male and female swimmers under his control for the past number of years.
O'Toole left the meeting feeling deflated by the official response and more frustrated than when he went in. But again, unknown to him, the sport of swimming was about to implode anyway.
From that point on, O'Toole believed that if anything was to change in his sport, then he and a handful of like-minded people would have to make it happen themselves. His view of Irish swimming had already begun to change drastically and the more he investigated, sometimes going from door to door introducing himself to former swimmers he thought may have come under Gibney's influence, the more his eyes were opened. As O'Toole gathered information, largely on his own, IASA seemingly did little.
This week's report on the front page of this newspaper that gardaí in Co Wexford are investigating allegations of sexual abuse associated with New Ross Kennedy Memorial Swimming Pool has shocked Irish swimming for the fourth time in a decade. It is understood that some of the allegations are about incidents alleged to have happened up to 20 years ago.
At this point the outcome is not the issue, but the fact that gardaí believe they have cause to investigate is devastating for swimming. The news that the allegations are of a sexual nature has put further pressure on a sport that, with many stress points, has been slowly buckling under its own weight.
At the time the O'Tooles spoke out a decade ago, the Garda Síochána had already carried out an investigation into Gibney. In 1993 a file was sent to the DPP containing 17 charges of rape, but Gibney successfully sought a judicial review and the case couldn't proceed.
Gibney then fled to the Warrender Swimming Club in Edinburgh. When the club was contacted, he skipped Scotland and went to the US, where he became a coach of children in North Jeffco, Colorado. The police in North Jeffco were alerted and Gibney, who was then married with three children, moved on again. His whereabouts now are unknown.
By that time the man appointed by the IASA to take over from Gibney as Olympic coach was generating his own notoriety. Once again a swimming face began appearing on the front pages of newspapers. The picture this time was of Ireland's Olympic swimming coach of 1980 and 1992, Derry O'Rourke, being led to prison in 1998 to face a 12-year sentence for sexually abusing swimmers, some as young as 10 years old.
Last January O'Rourke was sentenced to a further 10 years for the rape and indecent assault of another girl he had trained. Married with six children and now 58 years old, O'Rourke pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to two charges of rape and two counts of indecent assault of a Dublin schoolgirl during the 1970s.
Mr Justice Carney ordered him to remain under supervision for eight years from the date of his release. He said the "grooming of the victim for the purposes the accused had in mind" was "horrific", as were the offences committed against her and the effects they had upon her.
O'Rourke's offences were no different from those of Gibney. In court, Det Sgt Sarah Keane outlined how, in the most recent case against O'Rourke, the victim had been a boarding pupil at the school where he worked and had come under his twice-daily coaching regime. Throughout 1975 O'Rourke met her each evening in a boiler room, supposedly to discuss training, and would touch her over and under her clothes. The door would be locked. From 1976 O'Rourke had an office, in which he made the victim sit on his knee. He would take off her underwear and abuse her.
Holidays at home with her family were often interrupted by training, as O'Rourke gained almost total control of her. Swimming was her life and he became her closest "friend". She believed that the abuse was an integral part of her training. He used "relaxation" sessions with massage, made the girl lie naked on the floor, and also made her swim naked. He organised for her to go on the Pill in order to regulate her periods. When he first had intercourse with her and she asked what was happening, she was told: "Close your eyes and keep still." He never used a condom.
"This is my tsunami," said the victim in court. She said the day she saw media coverage of O'Rourke's previous cases was the day she acknowledged what he had done to her. That realisation caused an emotional meltdown that was personally devastating as she became overwhelmed by a sense of guilt, shame and responsibility.
"It has taken all my determination to deal with the hurt, pain, sadness and anger, and turn the tide of destructive forces that have arisen from what you did to me," she said.
Swimming was flattened. Sponsors ran from the sport. Acrimony between various groups of officials became poisonous and, in some instances, libellous. Writs began to fly as victims and their families demanded mass resignations from the association. They wanted everyone out, not because they were guilty of anything sinister or criminal but because for swimming to remain credible, it needed to be reseeded and restructured. From the victims' point of view, it seemed scarcely believable that the sport had allowed two child abusers in succession to be appointed Irish Olympic coach. The two men had been in an unbroken, controlling position for almost 20 years.
So vitriolic were the disputes and the accusations that the sport had done little to protect children from Gibney and O'Rourke that the Government stepped in. In 1998 the then minister for tourism, sport and recreation, Jim McDaid, stopped the funding for swimming and appointed Dr Roderick Murphy SC to conduct an independent inquiry. McDaid was attempting to do what the sport was unable to do for itself: rethink and restructure.
"The future of swimming rests with the swimming fraternity. It is up to them to convince me and others that there is a safe environment for swimmers and that the happenings of the past cannot be repeated," said McDaid in answer to a Dáil question in 1998.
But Dr Murphy's hands were tied by the inquiry's terms of reference, and McDaid's funding cuts seemed to be hurting the athletes more than anyone else. Galas were cancelled and the elite swimmers were missing important international tournaments abroad.
Many involved in swimming would have nothing to do with Murphy's inquiry. The original whistleblower, Gary O'Toole, did not contribute, nor did his father. The inquiry had no powers to compel people to attend, and although many did, it was essentially invitational and voluntary. The presumption on the victims' side was that anyone with anything to hide simply would not come forward. Why, they asked, would officials who held information that might incriminate them go and talk to a government- appointed senior counsel?
The Murphy report, which was published in June 1998, contained many sensible recommendations and demonstrated a material breakdown in the "command structure" within the sport. Complaints that were aired often never left the room in which they were made, it stated. When one victim, the same one who had confided in O'Toole during their overseas trip, went to a doctor who was involved in swimming and reported that Gibney had abused him, the advice was short, sharp and strikingly uncompassionate: "Forget about it and get on with your life."
The Murphy Report was not a set of directives for swimming's governing body, now known as Swim Ireland, to follow closely, but was made up of recommendations. No one in swimming was compelled to implement them and that was made clear at subsequent meetings.
Swim Ireland, then, was clear about the report. It had not been directed to implement all of its suggestions and it would not implement them. As a document for change, the association saw it as an à la carte menu of good practices from which it could pick and choose.
"I didn't see the Murphy report doing anything," says Aidan O'Toole. "The hierarchy were still going to be there and they were the people we wanted to leave the sport, all of them. We didn't think the report was far-reaching enough at all. The right structures were still not going to be put in place. It was a laugh.
"Look who had been there at the top: O'Rourke, Gibney, Frank McCann. It was hard to believe and I don't care what anybody says, they knew what each other was doing. They [O'Rourke, Gibney and McCann] were all covering for each other. You know what is the sad thing about this . . . nobody would stand up except a few people.
"To illustrate how bad it was, I at one stage reported Gibney to the officers of the swimming association. The laughable part was that when I went in to speak to them Derry O'Rourke was part of the panel who was going to decide what to do about my complaints about Gibney. It was scarcely believable."
Frank McCann was a mover and shaker in the organisation, an international swimmer, Irish swimming team manager in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and vice-president of the sport. He was soon to become top blazer presiding over the organisation.
In 1992, as Gibney was under investigation and O'Rourke was choosing his victims, McCann deliberately set fire to his house in Rathfarnham, Dublin, by causing a gas explosion. Upstairs were his wife of five years, Esther, and their foster-child, Jessica, who they had hoped to adopt. Both Esther and Jessica were burnt to death in the fire and McCann was arrested, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for their murder.
During the trial, the jury had heard that baby Jessica was a blood relative of the defendant but not a child of his marriage. The prosecution claimed that McCann arranged the fatal fire because he did not want to tell his wife why the couple's application to adopt Jessica had been refused, that in fact the child was one he had from a previous relationship.
For all the good many swimming coaches have done in Ireland over the years, for all of their willingness to rise at 4.30am and to breathe humid, chlorine-filled air for hours a day, the sport has become defined by its sordid past rather than by the intermittent good times, such as the European medals of Andrew Bree and Gary O'Toole.
Structural problems in the swimming world were illustrated with clarity in January last year in a report from Deloitte and Touche that focused on the governance of Swim Ireland. Even in the careful language of accountancy, it was savagely critical of the organisation and how it has been run.
The internal audit stated that liabilities exceeded assets and that the association was running the risk of becoming insolvent. A huge proportion of its income was absorbed in legal fees and insurance costs and the situation was not likely to improve soon.
The Irish Sports Council (ISC) had again stopped its funding pending wholesale changes in the way Swim Ireland was structured, funded and administered. The report stated that "major risks permeate Swim Ireland's operation" and that an enormous source of concern was "the plethora of legal cases coming before the courts shortly". The civil cases "range from reputational damage to the unknown cost outcomes".
At that stage, more than a dozen individuals were taking cases against the association and the costs for discovery alone were estimated at €125,000. The report made 19 recommendations for change. In addition, it stated, €34,000 earmarked for a Learn to Swim programme had seemingly disappeared, apparently used for some other function.
One of the most frightening conclusions reached by Deloitte and Touche was that Swim Ireland, an organisation with 12,000 members, most of them minors, "does not proactively operate a transparent tracking process and reporting mechanism whereby it monitors the implementation of recommendations contained in the Murphy report".
For critics of the association, it was Groundhog Day. For those who had looked at swimming's decline from the outside it seemed incredible that, given its recent past, swimming had defaulted back into its old ways. Trips abroad, positions on committees and in-house bickering had replaced the most pressing concern in the sport, that of child safety.
Swim Ireland this week reacted to the news in New Ross. In the past the organisation has said nothing, and has left it to the lawyers to sort out. But this week, chief executive officer Sarah Keane, who was finally appointed head of Swim Ireland last year after the damning Deloitte and Touche report, issued a brief statement on behalf of the association.
"Swim Ireland is aware that the gardaí are investigating allegations involving the swimming pool at New Ross. Because the Garda investigation is underway, it would not be appropriate to make any comment at this stage," it said.
Gary O'Toole is in the US now. No longer the angry student, he is a consultant in paediatrics. He once said on television that he would find it difficult to put his children into the sport he loved, given the way it was being governed.
That was 10 years ago. Looking on from a distance, he may find it difficult to change his view.
• Grievance and disciplinary procedures should be included in coaches' contracts
• All coaches and officers to attend child protection seminars
• Reporting abuse is not the same as making an allegation
• If children are at risk the club committee should be informed by the Garda or the health board
• Coach to stand down where complaints of sexual abuse are made
• Rumours should not be ignored
• Parents should not leave children in clubs after sessions are over