FOUR WOMEN WHO were sexually abused by George Gibney in the 1970s and 1980s have given victim impact statements in court. 

During a sentence hearing at the Central Criminal Court, one woman described the 78-year-old former national and Olympic swimming coach as a “manipulative, brazen, cowardly predator” who had abused her when she was an innocent child.

Another woman described having to see Gibney being “hero-worshipped” by the establishment after he had abused her, and said that the world would now know him as a “convicted, serial paedophile”. 

In her victim impact statement, another woman said she had spent years “hidden behind the glass wall that undisclosed sexual abuse erects” and described the strength she took from the gardaí “believing me”. 

Gibney was found guilty on 6 July of 39 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape. 

The offences occurred on dates between 1971 and 1981 at a number of locations in south county Dublin, including Glenalbyn swimming pool in Stillorgan and Newpark Sports Centre in Blackrock.

The four complainants were aged between eight and 15 at the time.

The abuse took the form of kissing, inappropriate touching, digital penetration, forced oral sex and, in relation to one complainant, attempted rape.

At a sentence hearing at the Central Criminal Court today, his defence counsel Patrick Gageby SC said Gibney now “accepts the verdicts of the jury and will not appeal his conviction”.

He said Gibney had achieved “some deserved fame in relation to the training of persons for high achieving sports”, but that this was some time ago and his reputation was now “entirely in tatters”. 

He asked the court to take into account that Gibney had pleaded guilty to some offences and that, besides his guilty pleas for those offences, he had no previous convictions. He also said that he is not in the fullness of his health. 

Gageby said he was now “a very different person” than the one “who committed these offences against young children who were in his care”.

Victim impact statements

Gibney was originally charged with 78 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape. He pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault, and not guilty to the remaining 74 counts. 

The jury were subsequently directed to return not guilty verdicts in relation to 33 counts of indecent assault related to two of the complainants. 

Gibney was found guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault in relation to the first complainant on dates between 1975 and 1977. He was found not guilty of one count of indecent assault.

The five indecent assault counts he pleaded guilty to relate to this complainant.

In her victim impact statement, the woman began by thanking the gardaí involved in her case. “They treated me with the utmost consideration. I cannot commend them highly enough,” she said. 

She recalled being referred to as “just a witness for the state” at one point, describing it as “a profound and telling statement” that had “opened my eyes to legal process and how I would be treated”.

“My God, I am a victim first and a witness for the state second,” she said.

She said her traumatic memories “have now been recounted by me to a room full of strangers” and she criticised members of the media, whom she described as “licking their chops salaciously imagining their headlines”. 

She said that when she was abused by Gibney 50 years ago, she was a “clueless, innocent child of the era” and he was a “manipulative, brazen, cowardly predator”.

She said she had suffered “shame, hurt and bewilderment for half a century” in a “frozen nightmare” that had “never resolved”.

Who would I be today had this manipulator not violated me? I don’t and will never know.

She said at the time of the abuse, she did not know counselling existed. “Having to share it with a stranger was unthinkable, so I buried it. I could not have borne the looks, the pity, the condemnations of the time.”

She said she was relieved that she never attended counselling because the counselling notes of the complainants in the case were sought, something she described as a “further humiliation”.

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

She said had Gibney not abused her, she “would not have had to face the revictimisation of the legal process”.

“The abuse at the time was at least private.”

She referenced how Gibney had pleaded guilty to five counts of abusing her. “What was that about? A surprise for sure, but why only five. I still had to stand up and be grilled. Everything I said was the truth. My truth,” she said. 

She went on to say: “The reward for being a victim is you lose out financially. So now being abused by George Gibney is hitting me in the wallet to add to the abuse.”

She said: “It is time to change the law so that it respects the dignity and courage of the victims.”

Gibney was also convicted of two counts of indecently assaulting the second complainant on dates between 1974 and 1979. 

The woman read her victim impact statement to the court, but asked that her privacy be respected. 

In relation to the third complainant, Gibney was found guilty of 24 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape on dates between 1971 and 1975. 

Turning to face Gibney as she began her victim impact statement, the woman said: “The burden I have carried for 54 years is now yours”.

She said “the shame, the guilt, the embarrassment” that she had carried since he abused her was now his to carry. 

You were a person in authority. People respected and trusted you and you abused that position.

“You didn’t show any respect for my wellbeing for my bodily autonomy or integrity. You took and took as you saw fit without a thought for the immediate and lifelong impact of your choices. I was just a sexual plaything for you.” 

The woman said she never got to experience a happy childhood because of Gibney’s abuse, describing how she had gone through nightmares, wetting the bed and self-isolation from her peers.

“It was more than just loss of innocence. It was the destruction of a previously happy and healthy child.”

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She described watching Gibney being “hero-worshipped” and “lauded and feted by the establishment” while “all the time knowing what you were and what you did”.

She said Gibney’s “depraved behaviours” impacted her ability to have relationships and robbed her of her potential. 

“Swimming was my absolute joy,” she said. “Whether or not I could’ve been a good, great or mediocre swimmer is beside the point. I never got to find out because of you.”

In essence, you altered the trajectory of my life and absolutely not in the ways I wanted.

The woman said she had spent decades trying to understand what happened to her. She said the decision to make her complaint was not easy, and that when she made it, she did not expect much to come from it. 

“I wanted an official record in my own words of your evilness,” she said. “I had no expectation that charges would be filed, that you would be arrested, the remote possibility of a trial.”

She said it was an “exercise of release and liberation of years of secrets that would be the documentation of my reality and truth of your depredation”. 

She thanked the gardaí involved in the case, saying they “listened without judgment and they believed me”.

Concluding her statement still facing Gibney, she said: “You have to hear that whilst you may have tried to destroy me as a child, you failed.

The world is going to know you now as a convicted, serial paedophile. I get to walk out of here free. Free of you.

Gibney was found guilty of one count of indecently assaulting the fourth complainant on a date between 1980 and 1981.

In her victim impact statement, the woman described the memories of what Gibney had done to her as “a revolving gallery of images in my head”.

She recalled seeing the headlights of his car as he approached her, something she said “didn’t make me feel like prey then. It does now.” She also recalled him “boring holes into my head through the glint in his glasses before he assaulted me”.

The woman said she had spent years “hidden behind the glass wall that undisclosed sexual abuse erects” and recalled how she had never told her father about what Gibney had done to her.

She said not telling him “always troubled me” and said she began having nightmares about Gibney during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

She said she had a nervous breakdown and subsequently started counselling. She said she contacted gardaí because “I was desperate”.

She said since she met the gardaí, she’s only had the odd nightmare and never about Gibney. She said she took real strength from the gardaí “believing me”. 

Mr Justice Micheál O’Higgins said he would need time to consider “the powerful victim impact statements” that had been made by the four women. 

He remanded Gibney in custody for sentencing on 12 October.