Orla Poole says the swimming coach attempted to rape her when she was 12 – a half-century later she faced him directly in court
Mon Oct 12 2026 - 14:44 • 5 MIN READ
As a nine-year-old girl growing up in Dublin in the 1970s, Orla Poole’s concerned mother sent her to see a psychologist.
She noticed that her daughter’s behaviour had altered. She had become aggressive, angry and volatile. She cut her hair short and she self-harmed.
The reasons did not emerge at the time to explain the transformation which took place almost overnight.
Poole moved from school to school around the country and after graduating from UCD, she left Ireland permanently to live in the United States.
Her work there was inside the American justice system and in 2020 an algorithm sent her a recommendation directing her towards an Apple podcast that had run for a few episodes: the BBC series “Where is George Gibney?”
She contacted one of the makers of the podcast, Mark Horgan, and subsequently made a statement to An Garda Síochána. Gibney was extradited from the US last year.
Poole’s was one of the testimonies from four women that convinced an Irish jury in July that the 78-year-old former Irish Olympic swimming coach was guilty of 39 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape of children in the 1970s and 1980s.
On Monday, Gibney was jailed for 15 and a half years. Judge Mícheál O’Higgins described Gibney as a “manipulative predator”, and his abuse as systematic, predatory in nature and a gross abuse of his position of authority as their swimming coach.
The most serious allegation of attempted rape was made by Poole, who was attacked by Gibney in Newpark Sports Complex in south Dublin. He also assaulted her in a hospital car park in Leopardstown and in the driveway of a ruined old house in the locality.
By 2020, when the algorithm suggested that the Apple podcast “might be of interest” to her they were on episode three of “Where is George Gibney?”
“My reaction? It was shock. It, Gibney, was a name I had not heard in years,” she says.
“I listened to episode one, two and three, and ended up calling my sister Deidre. She had been at summer camp with me in August 1975, when the attempted rape took place.
“The more I listened to the podcast the more that I heard of the other people ... I didn’t think he would be charged or extradited but I wanted a record of what he had done to me. I wanted this nine-year-old to have a voice. I wanted to say this is what happened to me. This is my reality.”
She says she had been sent home from the summer camp “for pushing a member of staff into the swimming pool after I had been assaulted by Gibney in the changing room”.
[ A shameless risk-taker and predator: How George Gibney groomed childrenOpens in new window ]
“But the letter outlining my suspension, which my mother had kept, was all lies,” she says.
After the attempted rape, he says she was taken to what would become Gibney’s office, “locked there until the end of the day and sent home with the letter in a sealed envelope”.
“My mother had kept folders for each one of her five kids, even kindergarten report cards. Folders for everything. If I didn’t have that letter, it would not have given the prosecutor the date of the summer camp in Newpark Sports Complex,” she says.
“Coming from the US criminal justice system I was expecting the worst in court. I found it very uncomfortable. I was expecting that he would ask where hands went and things like that,” she says, referring to the questions she was expecting from Gibney’s defence barrister Patrick Gageby.
“Mentally I was giving myself up for that. I found the Irish system to be a very cold, a heartless, faceless system. You never get to meet the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions].
“In the US system, you meet with the prosecutor. The DPP here makes the decision about filing charges. It is like a headless body. You don’t know them as people, and they are the ones that make the decisions.”
[ Former swimming coach George Gibney jailed for 15½ years for abusing four girlsOpens in new window ]
When Poole took the stand to give her witness impact statement, her chair faced out towards the judge, Justice Mícheál P O’Higgins to her left and the legal teams to her right.
Her first act was to turn the chair around and face Gibney directly. With her back to the judge, she delivered a powerfully impactful statement as he sat impassively in a wheelchair a few paces away.
“I knew exactly what I was going to do,” says Poole.
“Because it’s he, Gibney, that did it to me. I don’t understand the idea that you sit facing the judge. The judge didn’t do it to me. He did. What I found disgusting was that he [Gibney] didn’t even raise his head once, not only to me but to any of us.
“He never acknowledged ... he never graced us with even an apologetic look on his face. Just nothing. There was no sorry. Accepting his guilt would sound something like: ‘I am sorry for what I did to you as girls.’
“The only thing we heard out of his mouth was guilty five times at the start of the trial and not guilty 74 times. They are the only words the man spoke. This has been 54 years in the making and that’s all he spoke.”
At the beginning of the trial, Gibney pleaded guilty to five charges of indecent assault against one of the complainants. The four women were aged eight to 14 at the time of the offences.
“There was nothing from him like: ‘I have seen the error of my ways’ or ‘I understand what I put you through and I apologise.’ There were no words. It was horrible.
“When I walked into court, he wasn’t even paying attention. He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t hearing. There was no contrition. None. Discarding us like we were a nuisance to him.
“That’s how I felt at 12 years old in August 1975 after his attempted rape – him speaking, him telling me: ‘You are due back in the gym.’ Cold. Dismissive.”
Gibney’s indifference was apparent during the trial. He sat in the wheelchair throughout the two weeks without expression. Sometimes he would haul himself on to a bench and other days remain seated in the chair.
“If he’d looked at me, I think I would have had more satisfaction,” says Poole.
“If he had acknowledged that I am a human being and that he did this to me, that would have been something else.
“This was not about sex but about control and manipulation and torture, whether it was emotional, psychic or physical. If I came home from a bar fight with a broken nose and a black eye you can see the physical damage.
“Because it is childhood sex abuse and because most of the time it doesn’t come out when it’s occurring there is no visible physical damage, but it carries lifelong repercussions,” says Poole.
“At 80 years of age, he can still hurt someone. He doesn’t deserve to be out on the streets. He has avoided culpability for over 50 or 60 years, and he has never taken responsibility.
“For me, I think he needs to die in prison.”