Ongoing Story of Coach Abuse Is Being Ghosted. But a Washington Post Reporter Is on It.
November 1, 2024The full George Gibney story is told in two chapters of the new book UNDERWATER: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe.
PREVIOUSLY:
“Where Is ‘Where Is George Gibney?’,” April 18, 2022, https://concussioninc.net/?p=14994
“Garda Finally Clarifies — Says 4-Year-Old Complaint of George Gibney’s 1982 Molestation of 11-Year-Old Girl Remains Open,” October 21, https://concussioninc.net/?p=15877
by Irvin Muchnick
In a new interview with the Irish Independent, Helen Cody — a stylist and fashion consultant who has worked with, among others, Oscar-nominated American-Irish actress Saoirse Ronan — had memories of George Gibney, the most notorious at-large sex criminal in sports history, from his days as the swimming coach at Newpark Comprehensive School in Blackrock, County Dublin. Cody was a student there and her mother was a teacher:
“I started swimming when I was eight and by the time I was 12, I was in Trojans swimming club. I remember George Gibney distinctly, because I remember him coming into the girls’ changing rooms and us all feeling really awkward. I mean, we were 12. He’d come in to give us the pep talk. You know, you’re so innocent that you don’t … he’s my trainer, and you’ve to respect him, and he’s so tough.
I remember always wanting to avoid going past his office. If you did, he’d want you to go in and sit on his knee and give you a hug. He was very authoritative. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t OK that this man was coming in as we were showering and getting changed and talking to us. He’d tell us don’t be ridiculous, I’m trying to tell you about the next training session. But he was being a disgusting creep.
There were no rumours circulating at the time, but he rang my mother […] and said, ‘Look, with all this training she’s doing before school, I’ll collect her, I’ll bring her down and back up.'”
The subscribers-only link to this article is https://www.independent.ie/style/fashion/designer-helen-cody-i-was-in-trojans-swimming-club-i-remember-george-gibney-distinctly-because-i-remember-him-coming-into-the-girls-changing-rooms/a1905406138.html.
While it’s nice that the Independent supplied more vivid pile-on Gibney gossip decades after the fact, it seems to me that the newspaper also has a mission to update its readers on the purported imminent extradition of Gibney from the U.S. This would be for the purpose of a second prosecution of him, 30-plus years after a controversial Irish Supreme Court ruling that shut down the first one.
The Independent was among the several Irish news outlets, citing unnamed sources in the Garda, reporting a possible extradition in the offing. That was a year ago this month. Since then, there’s been nothing from the whole bunch of them.
By email, I asked Cormac Bourke, the Independent‘s editor-in-chief, about all this. I’ll let readers know if he gets back to me. As they say in Gaelic: Ná coinnigh do anáil. Don’t hold your breath.
