George Gibney pictured in 1988. Billy Stickland/INPHO
Central Criminal Court
The 78-year-old was convicted of 39 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape in July following a two-week trial at the Central Criminal Court.
FORMER SWIMMING COACH George Gibney is due to be sentenced this morning for sexually abusing four girls in the 1970s and 1980s.
The 78-year-old was convicted of 39 out of 40 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape in July following a two-week trial at the Central Criminal Court.
The jury of six men and six women acquitted him on one count of indecently assaulting one of the complainants on a date between 1976 and 1977.
Gibney was originally charged with 78 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape.
He pleaded guilty before the jury to five counts of indecent assault, and not guilty to the remaining 74 counts.
The jurors were directed to return not guilty verdicts in relation to 33 counts of indecent assault relating to two complainants following legal submissions and “in the absence of evidence to support them”.
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.
The trial heard evidence over seven days from the four complainants, as well as a number of other witnesses.
The four women gave victim impact statements at a sentence hearing in July. One woman described Gibney as a “manipulative, brazen, cowardly predator” who had abused her when she was an innocent child.
Another woman described having to see the former Olympic swimming coach 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”.
At the same hearing, defence counsel Patrick Gageby SC told the court that 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”.