How did the Supreme Court allow an abuser take a judicial review after he was charged in 1993?

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George Gibney’s successful injunction remains astonishing to many.

PAEDOPHILE SWIM COACH George Gibney was today jailed for over 15 years for the sexual abuse of four girls on dates in the 1970s and 1980s.

But it was not the first time he had faced such charges.

More than three decades ago in 1993, Gibney was charged with 27 counts of indecent assault and unlawful carnal knowledge of young swimmers under the age of 15 who he had coached.

At the time, “unlawful carnal knowledge” was the legal term for sexual intercourse without legal consent. It was abolished following a Supreme Court ruling in 2006. The term “indecent assault” was reclassified as sexual assault under the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990.

Gibney managed to win an injunction to prevent his prosecution.

Today, his success at this is something that remains astonishing to many. It meant that he was never found guilty or not guilty of the charges against him. Rather, the charges themselves disappeared, and Gibney remained a free man: free of convictions and free to leave the country. 

After he was charged, Gibney applied to the High Court to bring a judicial review to prevent the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from prosecuting the case. But his application was refused by Mr Justice Vivian Lavan on 19 July 1993. 

Gibney appealed this decision to the Supreme Court, which granted him leave to bring the judicial review, a legal process that allows people to challenge the lawfulness of a decision. 

This judgment was delivered on 14 December 1993 by then-Chief Justice Thomas Finlay, Mr Justice John Blayney and Ms Justice Susan Denham. The Journal has obtained a copy of it. 

Due to the nature of the charges, Gibney is not named in the judgment and is referred to as “the Applicant” throughout.

Grounds for seeking injunction

In the opening paragraph, Finlay states that the High Court refused the application to bring a judicial review to prevent Gibney’s trial on 27 charges contained in a book of evidence that was served on him on 29 June 1993.

He said that the charges “are a series of offences of indecency against young girls and of carnal knowledge of girls under the age of fifteen years, set in each instance on a date unknown between, in the majority of cases, a period of twelve months and in some cases lesser periods of five or six months.”

The earliest of the dates in respect of which the charges are laid is on an unknown date between 1 January 1967 and 31 December 1967. The latest is an unknown date between June 1981 and 31 December 1981.

The judgment states that the charges “involve a total of seven young girls”. 

It then lays out Gibney’s grounds for seeking the injunction. The first is that “the length of time which has elapsed between the date on which the offences are alleged to have been committed and the date of any trial is so long that it raises a presumption of prejudice which cannot be avoided or cured”.

Finlay states that in his affidavit, Gibney alleges “certain specific grounds for apprehending that a prejudiced or unfair trial would take place if it were permitted to continue”.

The Journal did not see a copy of Gibney’s affidavit, but the four grounds are outlined in the judgment. They are: 

• “The lack of specificity of the dates of the alleged offences.
• “That the facts ranging, as I have indicated, from an unspecified date twenty-six years ago to one, the most recent, twelve years ago, are so long past that it would be unjust to try him.
• “That by reason of these factors he cannot now hope to find witnesses who could reasonably be expected to give evidence as to his whereabouts or activities in the years 1967 to 1981 as would be required if he were to seek to establish an alibi in respect of all or any of the charges.
• “That he does not have any diary or other document which would assist him in recalling his whereabouts or activities during the period and that the only defence available to him, he having stated his innocence on oath, would be a simple, unsupported and uncorroborated denial.”

Finlay said that in refusing to allow the judicial review, the “learned” High Court judge Mr Justice Lavan stated that “he did not accept the contents of these paragraphs of the affidavit, that there was a prima facie case and no automatic time limit and that the matters raised were essentially for the trial judge and/or jury”. 

Prima facie is Latin for “at first sight” or “on the face of it”. Simply put, a prima facie case means that the case, based on the initial evidence, has enough proof to proceed to trial. 

Proofs

Finlay then goes on to outline the five “necessary ingredients which an applicant must satisfy in order to obtain liberty” of the Supreme Court to issue judicial review proceedings. 

These are, in summary, that they have “sufficient interest in the matter”; that the facts in the affidavit “would be sufficient, if proved, to support a stateable ground for the form of relief sought by way of judicial review”; that “an arguable case in law” can be made that the applicant “is entitled to the relief which he seeks”; that the application has been made “promptly”; and that the “only effective remedy, on the facts established by the Applicant, which the Applicant could obtain would be an order by way of judicial review”. 

The judge then went through each of these proofs. For the first, he said that Gibney has “a completely sufficient interest in the matter, being the person directly charged with the proceedings which he seeks to prohibit”.

He said the dates of the alleged offences and “the nature and form” of the charges “could, in my view, be capable of demonstrating a sufficient elapse of time and such a lack of precision with regard to dates as to constitute grounds for asserting a real risk of an unfair trial”

Finlay said Gibney made his application for a judicial review three months after he was initially charged, adding that he was “satisfied” that this was prompt. 

Finally, regarding the “appropriateness of judicial review as a remedy in this case”, Finlay cites a judgment from 1986 which he said “quite clearly endorsed the principle that if a person’s trial had been excessively delayed so as to prejudice his chance of obtaining a fair trial that the appropriate remedy was a judicial review, even though the Court of trial also has, of course, jurisdiction to prevent the trial”.

He said he was of the view that “a sufficient prima facie case has been made out to entitle the Applicant to the order”. 

‘I would therefore allow the appeal’

In his conclusion, Finlay said he is not ”reaching any decision as to what the appropriate order should be when the matter comes on for a full contested hearing before the High Court as an application for judicial review”. 

He said in these circumstances, the court had to be satisfied that an applicant seeking to bring a judicial review had no part in delaying the reporting of the offences.

He said the court could conclude that the extent to which an applicant had contributed to this delay meant that “as a matter of justice” they should not be entitled to a judicial review. 

“This issue may well be raised and fall for determination in this case, and I express no opinion on it, other than to say it is an issue which the court would have to consider,” he said. 

“I would, therefore, allow the appeal and give the Applicant liberty to institute proceedings by way of judicial review, and I would consider this Court should hear counsel upon the form of proceedings which would be most appropriate and on any special provisions with regard to times or other procedural matters.”

The Journal also obtained a copy of Susan Denham’s judgment. Denham, who went on to serve as Chief Justice of Ireland from 2011 to 2017, agrees with Finlay’s judgment and highlights two matters: the rule of law and the burden of proof. 

She said the law on the varying burdens of proof that arise at different stages of the judicial review process “applies to all applicants”.

“No matter how heinous the crime, or how disturbing the facts, every man, woman and child suspected, charged or convicted of an offence is entitled to the rule of law, and has constitutional rights,” she said. 

She said a trial in a court of law “is not an exercise in vengeance” but is “a trial in due course of law in the pursuit of justice on behalf of the community.”

“When women and children come to the legal system, it would be a disservice to them if it were perceived that they sought vengeance rather than the rule of law and justice.

“Insofar as there are new developments and knowledge in our society on issues that relate to the charges laid in this case then these matters must be dealt with in a fair and just way by the courts.”

Denham goes on to say that the burden of proof on an applicant to obtain liberty to apply for judicial review “is light”, adding that Gibney “is required to establish that he has made out a statable case, an arguable case in law”

She said the aim of the process of leave to apply for judicial review is “to effect a screening process of litigation against public authorities and officers” and to “prevent an abuse of the process, trivial or unstatable cases proceeding, and thus impeding public authorities unnecessarily”.

“Even though the ambit of judicial review has widened in recent years the kernel of the reason for this filtering process remains the same.

“On the affidavit and statement filed in this case in this preliminary procedure it is clear that such a case has been established to meet this initial burden of proof.”

Denham said on the actual application for judicial review, the applicant “has an altogether heavier burden of proof to discharge”, adding that this burden of proof was not before the court. 

She said reasons for the delay, which may include the complainants’ ages at the time of the alleged offences, the question of any dominion the applicant may have had over them and further matters “about which our society is becoming more and more aware in relation to charges such as are laid here” could be factors for determination. 

She added: “On the issue that is before the Court, the preliminary application for leave to apply for judicial review, the law entitles the applicant to such leave. I would allow the appeal.”

The judicial review proceeded, and in July 1994, Gibney successfully secured an injunction preventing the DPP from prosecuting him on the 27 charges.

The following month, he had left Ireland and was working as a swimming coach at Warrender Swim Centre in Edinburgh. When parents learned of the allegations against him in Ireland, they requested a meeting with the club’s committee.

In December 1994, Gibney was sacked. He went to the United States, where he had been for over three decades before he was extradited to Ireland in July 2025.