Why Is the Orlando Sentinel Missing in Action on the George Gibney Story? And Other Post-BBC Podcast Gibney Media Notes

by Irvin Muchnick

Though I have sharply criticized the thoroughness, as well as the lowest-common-denominator quality, of the BBC / Second Captains podcast Where Is George Gibney?, there is no question that this Mark Horgan series succeeded in one significant respect. It has created a space in which other major media outlets can choose, at last, to step up and reexamine the Gibney story, either comprehensively or from the several important angles Horgan consciously ducked.

The biggest breakthrough so far, on the American side, was last month’s coverage in the New York Times (which I reviewed here). Ed O’Loughlin, a Dublin-based Times stringer, became the first mainstream reporter since Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle in 2016 to tackle the global aspect of the protection of Gibney from accountability for more instances of child sexual assault than we’ll ever know. The Times did so by quoting the strong words of federal judge Charles Breyer during my Freedom of Information Act case against the Department of Homeland Security for background material from Gibney’s immigration records.

The Times whiffed, however, on Judge Breyer’s supportive comment about my hypothesis regarding the role of the American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) in engineering the coaching job offer letter for Gibney that enabled his relocation here on a diversity lottery visa. This came shortly after a nepotism-tinged Irish Supreme Court, in 1994, quashed his indictment on 27 counts of illicit carnal knowledge of minors.

Today there is behind-the-scenes drama at ASCA, which is now on its third executive director in 13 months following the retirement of John Leonard, who is perhaps the most pernicious figure in the swimming world’s decades of cover-ups of abusive coaches.

A hypothesis is educated speculation, not a wild guess. Stay tuned for more shortly on the ASCA drama.

Before and after the Times story, I have been importuning editors of the Orlando Sentinel to take Gibney coverage to another level. At age 72, Gibney lives in Altamonte Springs, Florida, north of Orlando. And as we know, all politics is local.

In 2010 the Sentinel published fleeting mention of a controversy among Gibney’s neighbors in Orlando, where he then lived and soon lost his home. (The reason is not known, but it may well have been part of the universal home mortgage collapses of that period.) The same year — probably not coincidentally — Gibney, holder of permanent resident alien status for a decade and a half at that point, applied unsuccessfully for U.S. citizenship. He moved into a house in nearby Altamonte Springs with “Brother Pedro” (possibly one of the local Knights of Columbus chapter players who are propping up the elderly Gibney with housing and a job at a hospice).

In 2014 George Diaz, a Sentinel columnist, wrote about the campaign to deny Chuck Wielgus, then the long-time chief executive of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s national sport governing body USA Swimming, induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Over a period of years, I pressed Diaz, who advocated for foster children, to write something additionally about the campaign to bring to justice the swimming coach monster in his midst. Diaz never came through before the Sentinel laid him off in 2018.

Most recently, following the conclusion of the podcast series, I pitched Sentinel editor-in-chief Julie Anderson and managing editor Roger Simmons. Anderson and Simmons directed it to Jeff Weiner, whose title is “justice & safety editor.” Weiner expressed interest, but he and his bosses all have fallen silent for more than a month.

What are they waiting for? So many local details from the Horgan podcast and the Times article remain unexplored. Among them: Peter Banks, the Tampa-based swimming coach, formerly a Gibney assistant in Ireland, all but admitted to Horgan that he was the person who brokered the American coaching job offer letter that was attached to Gibney’s original visa — and Banks was, at the time, an ASCA official. Also: The state attorney’s office in Hillsborough County has told me that the statute of limitations does not bar prosecution of Gibney today for his 1991 rape of a 17-year-old Irish swimmer during a Florida training trip — and this overlays and supplements the question of extraditing Gibney for previous crimes in his native country.

Irish Independent publishes a superlative account of Gibney cohort Frank McCann.

Two Sundays ago the Independent‘s Maeve Sheahan took a corner of the Gibney saga to a breaking development: the imminent release from Arbour Hill prison, after 27 years, of another legacy abuser Irish swimming coach, Frank McCann. “George Gibney case turns spotlight on double murderer Frank McCann — and his dealings with the teenager he coached,” is behind a paywall at https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/the-sunday-read-george-gibney-case-turns-spotlight-on-double-murderer-frank-mccann-and-his-dealings-with-the-teenagers-he-coached-40003580.html.

The Independent not only reviewed in depth the narrative of McCann’s murders — by burning down their house — of his wife and their 18-month-old baby. As Sheahan writes, the motive “was to conceal the secret that he fathered a child with an underage girl with special needs whom he coached at his swim club”:

“At the time, the enormity and profound cruelty of his crimes overshadowed his grotesque sexual interference with a vulnerable young girl. He received two life sentences for murdering Esther and Jessica but has never been called to account for his treatment of that young girl in his care.”

But there’s more. As Sheahan’s story points out, McCann also was president of the Leinster Branch of the then-Irish Amateur Swimming Association (now Swim Ireland) when the Gibney scandals broke in the early 1990s. As the 1998 Irish government Murphy report would point out, McCann made clear to others in the organization that exposure of the Gibney horrors would not happen on his watch.

Decorously, the Independent didn’t publish the exact words of Carol Walsh, the coach who brought the matter to McCann after talking with Gibney’s root victim and whistleblower, Chalkie White. McCann, Walsh said, said he “hoped to fuck it wouldn’t break while he was president” and told Walsh “to back off and not get involved.”

Irish Times publishes a new photo of Gibney (yawn).

Johnny Watterson, sports columnist of the Irish Times, who deserves all the credit for breaking the Gibney story nearly 30 years ago at the old Irish Tribune, is back with more Mark Horgan hype: “Where is George Gibney? podcast releases new photograph,” January 28, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/where-is-george-gibney-podcast-releases-new-photograph-1.4469271.

Big deal.

Evin Daly, the Irish-American head of the Florida nonprofit One Child International, has been shadowing Gibney for years. Daly took almost all the contemporary photos of Gibney that have run in the Irish media in the last decade-plus. One of them graces the cover of my ebook The George Gibney Chronicles: What the Hunt For the Most Notorious At-Large Sex Criminal in the History of Global Sports Tells Us About the Sports Establishments and Governments on Two Continents.

Watterson also writes, “While he is not currently involved with coaching young children, on arrival in the US Gibney did work at a swimming pool in Arvada, Colorado.”

Watterson knows better than to parrot this bland language from the New York Times. Gibney was not some maintenance worker swabbing the deck at the Apex Recreation Center. He was a coach on the staff of USA Swimming’s sanctioned North Jeffco age-group team there. Indeed, Watterson is the person who first enlightened me on the fact that officers of the Arvada Police Department, who investigated Gibney in 1995, to no end, following a sexual misconduct complaint, had kids swimming under him.

It’s time for the Irish and American media alike to start writing all this in plain English. Enough with the impenetrable code.

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CONCUSSION INC.’S FULL SERIES ON WHERE IS GEORGE GIBNEY?

“George Gibney Didn’t Vanish (full text from the Irish news site Broadsheet),” August 27, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14564

“No, Britain’s Guardian Newspaper — I Didn’t ‘Try Unsuccessfully to Have George Gibney Deported From the United States.’ Also, There’s No Past Tense About It.,” September 9, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14576

“George Gibney’s Family and Friends in High Places: Still the Elephant in the Room of Anglo-Irish Media Coverage of the ‘Vanished’ Sex Criminal Irish Olympic Swimming Coach,” September 13, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14585

“Anglo-Irish Media’s George Gibney Stench Gets Worse: Celebrated Editor of Irish Times Was Father of Supreme Court Justice Who Helped Gibney Escape Justice (Also, of Course, Father of Gibney’s Lawyer),” September 20, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14609

“When George Gibney Lived in Colorado (And Even Coached Swimming There), Two Suburban Denver Police Departments Learned All About Him. They Kicked the Can Down the Road.,” September 27, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14614

“‘Where Is George Gibney?’ Podcast Probably Won’t Explain His Vulnerability to American Criminal Charges in His 1991 Rape and Impregnation of a 17-Year-Old Irish Swimmer in Tampa — So We Will,” September 30, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14626

“Not Making Waves” (full text from Ireland’s Broadsheet), October 6, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14638

“‘Where Is George Gibney?’ How About ‘Where Is Peter Banks?'”, October 7, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14642

“Mark Horgan BBC Podcast Nails George Gibney Cohort Peter Banks For the 1993 Job Offer Letter That Enabled the Rapist Irish Olympic Coach’s U.S. Visa,” October 8, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14649

“Let’s Start Cataloging the Open Questions Left by the BBC’s Exposure of Peter Banks As an Architect of George Gibney’s Flight From Ireland to the U.S.,” October 9, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14654

“‘Where Is George Gibney?’ Podcast Delivers a Substance-Free Climax,” October 21, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14663

“BBC’s ‘Where Is George Gibney?’ Podcast Dribbles Down, Ignoring Major Questions,” November 23, 2020, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14681

• “Why Is George Gibney — No. 1 At-Large Pedophile in Global Sports — Living in Florida? And Who Sponsored His Green Card?”, January 27, 2015, https://concussioninc.net/?p=9797
• George Gibney: Rapist Former Irish National Swim Coach, and His 20+ Year American Odyssey: Comprehensive Headline Links … https://concussioninc.net/?p=10942
• THE GEORGE GIBNEY CHRONICLES: What the Hunt For the Most Notorious At-Large Sex Criminal in the History of Global Sports Has Told Us About the Sports Establishments and Governments on Two Continents — order the ebook at Amazon Kindle, https://www.amazon.com/George-Gibney-Chronicles-Establishments-Governments-ebook/dp/B07NZ6S3PJ, or get an emailed PDF copy by remitting US $3.49 via PayPal to paypal@muchnick.net