T-Minus One Week to George Gibney’s Sentencing. Also, 32 Years Into Lack of Scrutiny of the Corrupt Irish Legal Regime That Allowed Gibney and Fellow Child Molesters to Roam Free.

PREVIOUSLY:

“The George Gibney Victory Lap — And Beyond,” July 6, https://concussioninc.net/?p=16697

“The Irish Taboo Against Mentioning in the Same Breath Susan Denham (of the Supreme Court Panel That Sprang George Gibney in 1994) and Patrick Gageby (Gibney’s Barrister and Denham’s Brother),” July 8, https://concussioninc.net/?p=16701

“Introducing the Behind-the-Scenes Tale of the Disastrous Implications of the Irish Supreme Court’s Original 1994 Springing of George Gibney,” July 11, https://concussioninc.net/?p=16708

“Let’s Talk about the Other (Scrupulously Unpublicized) Defendants in Ireland’s Historical Sexual Abuse Cases Who Enjoyed Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Cards Thanks to the Supreme Court’s 1994 George Gibney ‘Delay Card’ Ruling,” July 14, https://concussioninc.net/?p=16715

“The Post-George Gibney Stench of Corruption in Historical Sexual Abuse Cases Hangs in the Irish Air — Whether or Not Anyone Wants to Acknowledge It,” July 16, https://concussioninc.net/?p=16722

by Irvin Muchnick

July 27 is the scheduled date of the sentencing hearing for George Gibney, now facing the music after decades as the most notorious at-large sex criminal in sports history. The recent trial in Dublin’s Central Criminal Court, following his extradition from the United States, resulted in a verdict of guilty on counts of sexual assault and attempted rape against four complainants.

In anticipation of this catharsis of sorts, we can expect Ireland to continue to be a split-screen. In the foreground will be the victim-centric coverage of the specific courtroom technicalities, laced with retributive condiments by “outspoken” commentators, some of them performative, over the exact terms of incarceration for the once powerful head coach of the Irish Olympic swim team. (And make no mistake, Gibney is indeed a horrid creature of biblical villainy.)

At the same time, there will likely continue to be no purposeful examination of how Gibney and so many others got away with so much for so long. On such matters, the national legal and media regime imposes an impenetrable code.

So with all the modesty of someone outside this culture – but also as a chronicler fortified by the fundamental background facts of the Irish swimming and Irish-at-large historical sexual abuse scandals, which cry out for deeper investigation and analysis – let me take a stab at some pre-commentary.

Following the victim impact statements and possible expressions of either remorse or defiance by the geriatric Gibney (he’s either 77 or 79 years old, according to what the local courtroom reporters told us on any given day of the trial), Justice Mícheál O’Higgins will hand down a sentence ranging from the proverbial “lock him up and throw away the key” to the proverbial “slap on the wrist.”

If it’s the latter – something less than the maximum allowable prison term, perhaps mitigated with weekend passes in deference to the convict’s age and declining health – then that will be certain to unleash expressions of outrage.

Yet, in the perverse environment of Irish silence and denial when it comes to the big picture (manifesting itself as free-floating cynicism with respect to corruption anywhere and everywhere), my own and perhaps unwelcome view is that something closer to the “slap on the wrist” end of the continuum actually could be the more desirable outcome.

A non-max sentence would fall short of a satisfying sense of proportionate retributive justice. But it might also unleash the most publicly hygienic response:  a more coherent outrage holding some promise for catalyzing real change in the Irish sexual abuse space.

Sorry to say, there is no value added by a central casting tableau of yet another belatedly busted pedophile getting trudged off in shackles. On the other hand, compelling evidence that perpetrators systematically earn more consideration than both their survivors and the civil society they inhabit is a formula for galvanizing action that doesn’t dissipate into the news cycle.

Let’s see what the 29th brings. Then, let’s roll up our sleeves and get back to telling the full story behind the 1994 Irish Supreme Court ruling that allowed Gibney to escape justice in the first place. The players in that corrupt chapter, both behind the bench and at the bar. How other privileged and protected bad guys also benefited from the curious legal ruling that codified Gibney’s “delay card” defense. It adds up to a social legacy in the round, with which the Irish still, sadly, have come nowhere close to a reckoning.

In tomorrow’s post, I’ll preview all this by uploading for public view the full texts of the two pertinent Irish Supreme Court cases. The first is Gibney’s in 1994, a blanket blessing of the “delay” defense to dismiss historical abuse cases. The second is the court’s about-face in 1999, a new doctrine enshrining the overall “dominion” test  of abuse survivors’ trauma, and eliminating prosecutorial delay alone to laser-print abusers’ get-out-of-jail-free cards.

As we’ll then see, what bears close examination is the period in between. Thanks to the national media regime of censorship and self-censorship, few Irish citizens even knew that a handful of their country’s best and brightest minds, leveraged by what was the equivalent of legal insider trading, were furiously invoking the Gibney precedent so as to get other privileged alleged abusers out from under accountability, or even any public shame.