ECW Press Launches Social Media Campaign During Olympics for ‘UNDERWATER’ Pre-Orders
July 18, 2024Washington Post Reports on How Little Has Changed at USA Gymnastics, Years after the Larry Nassar Scandals. You Can Substitute ‘USA Swimming’ for ‘USA Gymnastics’
July 23, 2024by Irvin Muchnick
“Former Irish international swimming coach Derry O’Rourke has been convicted of raping and sexually assaulting a teenage girl 35 years ago.” Yesterday’s Irish Times, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/former-irish-international-swimming-coach-derry-orourke-convicted-of-rape-and-sexual-assault/a765622469.html?
Next to the elusive George Gibney, Derry O’Rourke was by some measure the most loathsome figure among the Irish swimming coaches whose abuses of youth athletes traumatized the nation and led to the dissolution of the Irish Amateur Swimming Association. O’Rourke was Gibney’s predecessor as head coach of the Olympic swimming team in 1980, and Gibney’s successor in 1992.
If the 78-year-old O’Rourke gets sentenced to prison in the new case, it will not be his first incarceration tour. He was jailed from 1998 to 2010 after pleading guilty to 29 counts of defilement, sexual assault, and indecent assault against 11 girls between the mid-seventies and the early nineties. And in another case that concluded in 2005 and resulted in a second sentence that overlapped with his first one, O’Rourke got ten years on two charges of rape and two counts of indecent assault of another victim in the seventies.
Meanwhile, infamously, not a glove has been laid on George Gibney – the most notorious at-large sex criminal in sports history and subject of two chapters of my upcoming book.
The O’Rourke news naturally renews the question of whether action is imminent, as well, on Gibney, a U.S. resident alien since 1994 (and a failed applicant for naturalized citizenship after lying about his Irish past on his 2010 citizenship application). It’s now approaching nine months since Irish news media reported leaks from the Garda, the national police, that a new referral had been made to the Director of Public Prosecutions to seek Gibney’s extradition and trial. Such a trial likely would not revive the case that had been thrown out decades ago by an Irish Supreme Court ruling, based on a technical and controversial statute-of-limitations principle; rather, the new run at Gibney justice would have been catalyzed by fresh allegations emerging from new accusers in the wake of the 2020 BBC / Second Captains podcast Where Is George Gibney?
As readers of this space know, I recently published another article about Gibney, “George Gibney and the scandalously unprosecuted rape of ‘Stella’,” in Ireland’s Village magazine.
As readers also know, I have not minced words in stating that Village censored my piece, for unknown reasons. Without telling me, they published a version that removed exclusive new information from my conversation with Dr. Moira O’Brien, a former official with the swimming association who was involved in the care of Stella after Gibney raped her on a Florida training trip in 1991 – after which Stella has said she was drugged and taken to a London abortion clinic. Inaccurately and outrageously, Village replaced Dr. O’Brien’s extensive quotes with the line, “(O’Brien did not respond to our request for comment.)”
With yesterday’s news, Village tweeted out:
“As Derry O’Rourke is today convicted, another swimming coach George Gibney remains scandalously unprosecuted for the rape of Stella. From current edition of Village Magazine. By @irvmuch …”
In another oddity, the Village link to this article, https://villagemagazine.ie/george-gibney-and-the-scandalously-unprosecuted-rape-of-stella/, yielded blank content – as had been the case ever since the magazine loaded its new issue online more than a week ago. Late yesterday, that problem appears to have been corrected, and you now can read the Village version of the article at that link. Previously, I had posted the Village version myself at https://muchnick.net/gibneyvillagejuly24.pdf.
The full, unvarnished, and authorized version of my article is at https://concussioninc.net/?p=15643.
UNDERWATER: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe will be published shortly after the Paris Olympics. Links for pre-orders from many outlets are at https://concussioninc.net/?p=15530. Information on our Irish media and bookstore tour in October will be announced shortly.
