Former Irish swimming coach George Gibney; and US journalist Irvin Muchnik
Over the Christmas break, American journalist Irvin Muchnick published a series of articles in which he reviewed his coverage of former Irish swimming coach George Gibney.
At the outset of this series, Mr Muchnick explained the timing of the articles, saying:
Well-placed sources on both sides of the Atlantic are telling me that there is, at long last, real behind-the-scenes movement.
Whatever might be happening in Ireland is important enough; I’m told I’ll have reportable details soon. But what would be the real game-changer is happening in the US, where there is a quiet and overdue revisit of Gibney’s permanent alien residency privileges.
Mysteriously, the smooth sailing of Gibney’s green card has persisted since the mid-1990s. Most perversely, his status has remained undisturbed even since 2010, the year his application for naturalized citizenship got rejected on the grounds of his concealment of his 1993 indictment in Ireland on 27 counts of indecent carnal knowledge of minors.”
Further to this…
Last night, Mr Muchnick reported:
“I have learned that the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump is poised make some kind of move that the US authorities have ducked for decades.”
Mr Muchnick has not specifically reported what this “move” may be.
But he has recalled a number of matters which may be considered, namely:
Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan’s work with US Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Ms Speier telling Ms O’Sullivan that she would raise the citizen application issue with the House Judiciary Committee.
And the US Center for SafeSport’s investigation of Gibney – after a complaint was made to the entity by Ms O’Sullivan in relation to the Tampa rape allegation and Gibney’s time as a coach at USA Swimming-sanctioned North Jeffco swim club in the Denver suburb of Arvada, Colorado, after he arrived in the US.
Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan; George Gibney; and journalist Irvin Muchnick
This week.
Further to Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan writing to Shellie Pfohl – head of the new US Center for SafeSport – to formally request an investigation into former Irish swimming coach George Gibney….
US journalist Irvin Muchnick, of Concussion Inc., reports that the US Center for SafeSport has opened an investigation into Gibney.
Mr Muchnick writes:
The SafeSport Center’s investigation begins as O’Sullivan engages with American politicians closely identified with the youth sports coach abuse issue in this country — principally Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California.
This development also coincides with Congressional hearings this week in which Tim Hinchey, CEO of USA Swimming, and other national sport governing body heads and Olympic officials are being called on the carpet after the scandal of Larry Nassar, the prolific molester doctor of USA Gymnastics, raised the problem to its highest profile yet.
In a May 7 letter to O’Sullivan, the SafeSport Center’s Jocelyn Shafer confirmed that it was undertaking the investigation that had been requested …Shafer said the investigation was being overseen Malia Arrington, the center’s chief operating officer under CEO Shellie Pfohl.
Former Irish swimming coach George Gibney was charged with 27 counts of indecency against young swimmers and of carnal knowledge of girls under the age of 15 in April, 1993.
After this, he left Ireland for Edinburgh, Scotland and then the US.
Gibney was granted a visa during a visit to the United States in 1992 – seemingly aided by a Garda character reference – a year after people who had been abused by him started to speak up and organise themselves.
In March 2015, it was reported that police in Colorado, America, investigated a complaint of sexual assault made by a young swimmer against Gibney in October 1995 – a year after the sexual abuse and rape charges against him were dropped in Ireland.
At the time of the complaint, Gibney was working as a coach in the North Jeffco Parks and Recreation District.
The Arvada Police Department in Colorado couldn’t establish if any crime had been committed.
US journalist Irvin Muchnick, of Concussion Inc, has previously reported that the police officer who investigated the complaint made in North Jeffco was the mother of a swimmer at North Jeffco.
Attempts by Mr Muchnick to obtain the 1995 Arvada police report have been unsuccessful as the local government has refused to release it.
Meanwhile…
Mr Muchnick further reports that this week, in an email answering some of the first questions posed by US Center for SafeSport, Ms O’Sullivan has written:
“He [Gibney] has been in the US since the mid to late 90’s; we know he coached in Arvada, Colorado. We know he was a board member of a programme for youth at risk and was chair of a church’s eye clinic mission in Peru.
“We know our police expressed concerns to US authorities in ’95, ’98 and 2001.
“While my country has a lot of questions to answer we believe so has the US.
“Who facilitated him into the US in the first place; what type of visa did he have; how was he offered employment in the US; why is he allowed continued residency in the US particularly as his application for citizenship was denied. Did the American Swimming Coaches Association assist him in re-locating to the US?”
Former Irish swimming coach George Gibney; Arvada police badge, Colorado
Former Irish swimming coach George Gibney was charged with 27 counts of indecency against young swimmers and of carnal knowledge of girls under the age of 15 in April, 1993.
He sought and won a controversial High Court judicial review in 1994 which quashed all the charges against him.
After this, he left Ireland for Edinburgh, Scotland and then the US.
Gibney was granted a visa during a visit to the United States in 1992 – seemingly aided by a Garda character reference – a year after people who had been abused by him started to speak up and organise themselves.
Readers may also recall how, in March 2015, it was reported that police in Colorado, America, investigated a complaint of sexual assault made by a young swimmer against Gibney in October 1995 – a year after the sexual abuse and rape charges against him were dropped in Ireland.
At the time of the complaint, Gibney was working as a coach in the North Jeffco Parks & Recreation District.
The Arvada Police Department in Colorado couldn’t establish if any crime had been committed.
However…
Further to this…
Irvin Muchnick, on his website Concussion Inc, reports that the police officer who investigated the complaint made in North Jeffco was the mother of a swimmer at North Jeffco.
Mr Muchnick writes:
Sources in both Ireland and the United States have told Concussion Inc. that the Arvada (Colorado) police sergeant who investigated George Gibney in 1995 — after the police learned of Gibney’s allegations of sexual abuse in Ireland and of a possible incident of Gibney’s sexual misconduct at the North Jeffco swim club in this Denver suburb — herself was the mother of a swimmer at USA Swimming’s North Jeffco program.
The news that Sergeant Jo Ann Rzeppa either didn’t disclose this seeming conflict, or was assigned to carry out her assignment to conduct an investigation at North Jeffco in full knowledge by the department of her connection to it, casts in a new light an ultimate police report that was already shrouded in mystery and apparent shortcomings.
Questions surrounding the actions or inactions of the Arvada police add to the body of information of how Gibney, whom we’ve described as the most notorious at-large sex criminal in the history of global sports, not only managed to gain entry to the US via a 1992 visa, but also has remained in this country ever since — thanks in large part to curious official decisions that have had the clear effect of protecting him from on ongoing campaign to seek his extradition and trial on dozens of both old and newly emerging allegations of molestation and rape.
Asked for comment on the information about now-retired Sergeant Rzeppa, a spokesperson for Arvada acting police chief Edward Brady told Concussion Inc. late Monday that the department will respond “once we have completed our research…. We will get back to you as soon as we are able.”
In 2015, before I knew that Rzeppa was possibly conflicted in investigating a complaint at North Jeffco and shortly after she retired from the police force, I had attempted unsuccessfully to contact her via Facebook. Today I could not get through to Rzeppa via what I believe is a good phone number for her in the greater Denver area.
Three years ago the Arvada police refused our request to release Rzeppa’s report on Gibney, with the claim that reports of child sexual abuse are exempt from Colorado’s public records law.
The summary provided by the police said Gibney “was suspected of possibly pinching (or snapping the swimsuit of) a North Jeffco swimmer. The APD investigated this allegation, but was unable to establish that a crime had occurred. Shortly thereafter, the APD learned that Mr. Gibney was no longer employed by North Jeffco. The APD had no other involvement in this matter.”
In light of the new information, and because the bulk of the report actually seemed to be an investigation of a tip about Gibney’s Irish past, and because references to any specific alleged victim could be readily redacted, I have asked Chief Brady to reconsider the records office’s 2015 decision not to release the full report.
Even without questions of a conflict of interest on the part of the investigating officer,the outcome of the 1995 Arvada investigation was alone enough to cast doubt on whether the local police and the swimming community leadership had taken any public safety initiative beyond simply reinforcing Gibney’s separation from the North Jeffco team.
Gibney would remain in the Denver area for an additional five years; his activities through that period included ones granting him close access to children. They included serving on the board of directors of a state government-subsidized program for at-risk youth, and chairing a local Catholic church’s eye clinic mission to Peru.
The only reason Sergeant Rzeppa’s name even surfaced in connection with the 1995 Arvada investigation is that she was named — as a fellow officer who was consulted for background — in a second police report on Gibney, in 2000, in the neighboring suburb of Wheat Ridge.
Perhaps the most emphatic indictment of the Arvada police’s passivity and the possible motivations behind it, however, would come six years later, after an investigative team for Prime Time, a program on the Irish television network RTÉ, tracked Gibney to Calistoga, California, and interviewed John R. Robertson, operations chief for the Napa County sheriff’s office.
Robertson (who is now the county sheriff) told Prime Time’s Clare Murphy that Gibney’s presence in the community “isn’t something we take lightly in the state of California or especially in the county of Napa.” Robertson added that the sheriff was adamant about “wanting to track these people” and share “information with the surrounding agencies.”
The conclusion of the Arvada report summary, “No further action was taken,” leaves open whether even perfunctory tracking of Gibney and sharing of information with local Federal Bureau of Investigation field offices ever happened in Colorado.
The findings in the settlement last December of my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for Gibney’s immigration records included multiple references in the government’s production to the existence of law enforcement records in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services file of more than 100 pages.
This entire sequence of events was set up by Gibney’s original 1994 hire at North Jeffco— two years after Gibney submitted an American coaching job offer letter with his successful application under a diversity lottery visa program of the period known as the “Donnelly visa.” The program had large set-asides for applications from Ireland.
Though the details of the job offer remained redacted under my FOIA settlement, U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer’s 2016 decision “(mostly) in Muchnick’s favor” fueled what the judge called my suspicion that “the American Swimming Coaches Association greased the wheels for Gibney’s relocation.”
…In the wake of the FOIA disclosures, Irish legislator [Independent TD] Maureen O’Sullivan has redoubled a campaign to get the cooperation of American politicians in seeking the sharing of information between Irish and American law enforcement agencies, and reconsideration of Gibney’s resident alien status in the U.S. Last week O’Sullivan told Concussion Inc. that she would be announcing new moves in the near future.
From top: George Gibney, RTÉ Montrose; a tweet yesterday from Johnny Watterson
Johnny Watterson was one of the first journalists to write about former Irish swimming coach George Gibney in the 1990s.
Mr Watterson has written a 3,000-word article on Gibney for tomorrow’s Irish Times.
RTÉ has reportedly declined an ad from the newspaper promoting the piece because it used the word ‘paedophile’.
Gibney was charged with 27 counts of indecency against young swimmers and of carnal knowledge of girls under the age of 15 in April, 1993.
He sought and won a controversial High Court judicial review in 1994 which quashed all the charges against him.
After this, Gibney left Ireland for Edinburgh, Scotland and then the US.
Gibney was granted a visa during a visit to the United States in 1992 – seemingly aided by a Garda character reference – a year after people who had been abused by him started to speak up and organise themselves.
In February 1998 the thenSports Minister Jim McDaid appointed Dr Roderick Murphy, SC, to investigate child sex abuse in swimming.
The inquiry was ordered to examine how complaints about Gibney and fellow coach Derry O’Rourke were handled.
In the end 70 witnesses, including 20 victims, 12 parents, seven coaches, and a number of officials from the IASA and individual swimming clubs took part in the inquiry.
And, while neither coach was named in either the terms of reference or the eventual report, the conclusion was certain.
The president of the board of directors of the American Swimming Coaches Association, Don Heidary, yesterday told this reporter he had never heard of George Gibney and that the controversy surrounding him preceded Heidary’s involvement with ASCA.
At the same time, Heidary did not utilize the opportunity to issue even a ritualized denial of the possibility that ASCA might have helped set up Gibney for employment in America as he was facing allegations of sexual abuse, which would culminate in a 27-count criminal indictment in Ireland.
It began: “Over the past forty years, I have coached in the summer-leagues, at the high school level, and as a proud member of USA Swimming. What I have seen, and have been blessed to be a part of, is a culture that is anything but predatory, abusive, and certainly not profit-driven.”
I noted to Heidary that I believe his own club, Orinda Aquatics in California, was where one of my daughter’s teammates at nearby Bear Swimming migrated in 2008 after the teammate, at 16, was twice raped by Bear head coach Jesse Stovall, who was chaperoning her on a trip to Florida for a national meet.
I wrote Heidary: “Since you are president of the ASCA board, I ask for your assistance in the mystery of who wrote and who brokered the letter offering George Gibney a coaching job in the United States in the early 1990s while he was facing dozens of criminal charges of child sex abuse in Ireland.
“In his opinion, in my recently settled Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, U.S. District Court Senior Judge Charles R. Breyer took pains to point out that I am someone who ‘suspects that the American Swimming Coaches Association greased the wheels for Gibney’s relocation.’” (And I pointed Heidary to the almost fully redacted copy of Gibney’s job offer letter, which submitted at the time of his 1992 American visa application, here)
Heidary replied:
“I’m sorry I can’t help with this. Your email is the first I have ever heard that name and I have never heard anything related to this issue. In the early nineties I was coaching a summer-league and high school team in Orinda and not affiliated or involved with USA Swimming or the American Swimming Coaches Association.”
In a follow-up, I said that Heidary was not answering the question I was posing. The question, I persisted, does not concern his personal resume or even his level of knowledge of Gibney — the most notorious at-large sex criminal in global sports history — but rather the historical involvement of ASCA, the organization Heidary leads.
As Concussion Inc.’s coverage through the years has pointed out, ASCA executive director John Leonard told us: “We do not have an organization that deals directly with children, nor is that part of our purpose in any way, shape or form, according to our formative documents from 1958 and thereafter.”
Helping coaches obtain visas is a central part of ASCA’s business model.
Heidary did not respond to the follow-up. This article is being forwarded to the entire ASCA board for further comment.
From top: Frank McCann walking outside Arbour Hill Prison, Dublin 7 last July (via Independent.ie) and George Gibney
Today.
Further to a report in the Irish Independent last Friday that former Irish swimming coach Frank McCann – who murdered his wife Esther and McCann’s sister Jeanette’s baby Jessica by setting fire to their family home in Rathfarnham in 1992 – is due for release…
US journalist Irvin Muchnick writes…
In 1992 Irish swimming coach Frank McCann burned down his house. It was his fourth, and this time successful, attempt to kill his wife Esther and their 18-month-old daughter Jessica. McCann chose multiple murder over disclosing that he had fathered a child by one of his swimmers, who was 17.
McCann is back in the news because, after two decades of incarceration for his crime, he has begun pre-release vocational training and supervised time out from Arbour Hill Prison. The Irish Independent reports that Esther McCann’s sister is fearful for the safety of the rest of the family. See here
In his 2016 decision in my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for George Gibney’s American immigration records, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer recounts the sordid history of sexual abuse in Irish swimming. This includes the stories of McCann and Derry O’Rourke; the latter pleaded guilty to 29 criminal counts of abuse in 1998.
“George Gibney,” Breyer wrote, “got away.” In my recent settlement of the FOIA case at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the American government conceded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement supplied a memorandum in 2010 stating that Gibney could not be removed from the country even though he had lied in his citizenship application that year about his own 27-count indictment in Ireland in 1993 for illicit sexual relations with minors.
The Gibney-McCann connection gets worse.
As president of the Leinster Branch of the Irish Amateur Swimming Association, McCann was told of Gibney’s abuse of Chalkie White, by White. Later another coach, Carol Walsh, brought the same information to McCann.
According to the news site Broadsheet.ie, Walsh said McCann told Walsh to back off.
irivin Muchnik in conversation with OTB:AMyesterday; Larry Nasser (left) and George Gibney
US-based journalist irvin Muchnik writes:
For a long time I have held the view that the Irish victims of George Gibney — perhaps the most notorious at-large sex abuser in international sports history — along with their families and advocates, have done quite enough of the heavy lifting in the quest for long-delayed justice and closure.
Though it’s true that it was the warps in the Irish criminal justice system that initially let Gibney off the hook for his crimes there, and it was cronyism and corruption in high places there that smoothed his passage to the United States, there should be a proverbial statute of limitations on repeated dashed expectations.
Somewhere along the way of the past quarter of a century, roaming unaccountably free across Colorado, Utah, California, Florida, and points in between, Gibney became, fundamentally, a problem for his pliant hosts, the Americans, to grasp and resolve.
My recently concluded Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for Gibney’s immigration records establishes that friendly forces in the US enabled the perpetuation of this heinous global sports cover-up.
In all likelihood, it was the apparatchiks of the American Swimming Coaches Association who set up Gibney at the North Jeffco Swim Club in Arvada, Colorado, in the mid-1990s.
And after Gibney, in an apparent panic, filed for naturalized citizenship some 16 years into his unsettled, multi-state alien residency here — and concealed from the application his 27-count criminal indictment in Ireland — it was the American government, in 2010, that curiously ruled, in conjunction with the rejection of that application, that he could not be deported.
Therefore, it is up to people of the US to stand up for what is right.
Stand up for what Judge Charles R. Breyer, in the final hearing of the FOIA case, aptly called a determination of whether our immigration system was a perversity, some sort of “haven for pedophiles.”
No Irish authority can compel the American government to look hard and honorably at the peculiar loopholes Gibney exploited in order to become, in his senescence, ingrained in the community of Altamonte Springs, Florida, like a retired Treblinka gate guard.
No bloc of Irish voters exists to pressure American politicians to probe the bizarre and contradictory moves documented in the Gibney file by, first, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and, second, U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS).
Anyway, this has been my position.
But this week it changed.
It changed because an independent and overarching event intervened. A sicko doctor at Michigan State University named Larry Nassar was convicted and sentenced in his molestations of well over 100 girls and young women under the aegis of USA Gymnastics.
Heads are rolling at both institutions.
In their wake is a unique, indeed historic, opportunity to join the campaign to extradite and try George Gibney with the newly risen awareness of the abuses of power, safety, and decency throughout the youth programs of Olympic sports bodies everywhere.
And that is why I appeal to those good people in Ireland to suck it up one more time and make their voices heard to those Americans with good instincts on this issue.
They include Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Jackie Speier, to whom Teachta Dála Maureen O’Sullivan last month already asked for help in the Gibney matter.
Such help must go beyond merely “raising questions” about immigration procedures. It also must facilitate the sharing of information collected by the Irish government (principally in reports of An Garda Síochána, the national police, and in the 1998 Murphy Inquiry into sexual abuse in Irish swimming) with appropriate American agencies (most especially the prosecutors’ offices in Florida, site of Gibney’s known heinous crime on American soil).
When the last page of the last chapter is written on George Gibney, it will not be the story of an individual monster, any more than Larry Nassar’s was. It will be a web of epic failures of the money-driven tropisms of kid sports programs.
They were supposed to be all about physical fitness and healthy competition. Instead, they became about gold medals and the runaway gravy train of the bureaucrats and obscenely well-heeled executives of the Olympic movement.
Coaches like to exhort their athletes: Give me one more lap. After bearing lifelong psychological damage and heartache, some for as long as 50 years, those who were scarred by Gibney, and those who support them, need to go ’round one more time here. There are no guarantees that we’ll succeed. But there’s the certainly that we can’t, unless we try.
For those of you just tuning in, here are key data points:
1990: In an elliptical conversation on a plane flight to an international competition, Irish Olympic swimmer Gary O’Toole is first tipped that Gibney had molested athletes beginning more than 20 years earlier. O’Toole starts designing the mechanisms to canvass Irish swimmers and get the word out to sport authorities and police.
1991: On a training trip, Gibney rapes and impregnates a 17-year-old swimmer he had earlier violated in Holland. The girl is drugged by an Irish swimming official and taken to England for a secret abortion.
1992: Gibney successfully applies for a US. visa under the Donnelly diversity lottery program. He attaches to his application both an American job offer letter and a “certificate of character” from a Garda precinct. The certificate, representing that Gibney enjoyed a spotless record, was issued at a point when allegations of the coach’s abuse were already surfacing and multiplying.
1993: Gibney is indicted on 27 counts of sex crimes against minors.
1994: The Irish Supreme Court halts Gibney’s prosecution on the grounds that some of the charges date too far back to allow a fair trial. One of the sitting justices, Susan Denham (later the chief justice), did not recuse herself from the case even though she is the sister of Gibney’s barrister Patrick Gageby.
Gibney moves to the US by way of Scotland.
1995: Gibney leaves the Colorado swim club where he was a coach following an allegation of sexual misconduct. He is not charged with a crime, but the episode leads to the outing of his Irish past in the local community and sparks many years of nomadic American residence and employment outside the aquatics industry.
1998: The Murphy Commission concludes, “In light of the charges arising out of the Garda investigation the complainants were vindicated.”
2006: RTÉ’s Prime Time interviews Gibney victims on camera (including the victim of the 1991 Florida rape); confronts Gibney in Calistoga, California; and quotes the local sheriff confirming that Gibney was on the radar of both the local sheriff’s office and the FBI.
2008: Justine McCarthy publishes the book Deep Deception: Ireland’s Swimming Scandals.
2010: Irish-American Evin Daly, head of the Florida anti-abuse organization One Child International, publishes information on Gibney’s history and submits it to the federal government.
Gibney applies for citizenship.
In an internal memorandum, the government’s ICE agency memorializes the opinion that Gibney is not removable from the country
After first warning Gibney that his citizenship application was defective in its answer to the question of whether he had ever been charged with or convicted of a crime, USCIS denies the application.
Former Olympic swimmer Gary O’Toole reflects on George Gibney in conversation with Ger Gilroy on OTB AM.
Via OTB AM:
Swimming coach George Gibney was accused of 27 counts of indecent assault and unlawful carnal knowledge though he escaped conviction following a Supreme Court ruling in 1993. Gary O’Toole played a central role in bringing Gibney’s case to public attention. He shared his story with OTB AM.
From top: A woman who alleges she was raped by former Irish swimming coach George Gibney in Florida in 1991 when she was 17; Gibney; a certificate of character signed by An Garda Siochana for Gibney’s US visa application in 1992; and documents from his visa file
Readers will recall the former Irish swimming coach George Gibney who is currently living in the US – despite him failing to secure US citizenship in 2010 after his application seemingly concealed how he had been previously charged in 1993 in Ireland.
Gibney was charged with 27 counts of indecency against young swimmers and of carnal knowledge of girls under the age of 15 in April, 1993, in Ireland.
But he sought and won a High Court judicial review in 1994 which quashed all the charges against him.
The judicial review was secured after a Supreme Court decision, during which Gibney’s senior counsel Patrick Gageby argued that the delay in initiating the prosecution against Gibney infringed his right to a fair trial.
Mr Gageby’s sister, future Chief Justice Susan Denham, was on the bench of the Supreme Court that day.
Gibney subsequently left Ireland, first for Scotland and then America.
Readers will recall the exhaustive efforts of US journalist Irvin Muchnick to obtain documents pertaining to Gibney’s US visa file.
After a settlement, heavily redacted documents pertaining to this file were released to US journalist Irvin Muchnick just before Christmas and show Gibney was granted a four-month visa during a visit to the United States in 1992.
This visa application was supported by a Garda character reference issued in January 1992 (see above) – a year afterpeople who had been abused by him started to speak up and organise themselves.
On foot of these documents, on December 17 last, Sunday Times journalist Justine McCarthy reported how, in February 1991, European silver medallist swimmer Gary O’Toole – who was told in December 1990 by fellow swimmer Chalkie White that Gibney abused him in – told Gibney he was quitting Gibney’s elite team and when Gibney asked why, Mr O’Toole said: “I think you know why.”
Others had also spoken up before his Garda character reference was issued.
In January, 1991, while in Australia, Mr White told the honorary medical officer of both the Irish Amateur Swimming Association and the Leinster Branch of the IASA, Moira O’Brien, that he had been abused by Gibney.
White would later tell the Murphy Inquiry – set up to look at abuse in swimming (more below) – that Ms O’Brien told him it would be his word against Gibney and that he should ‘get on with it’.
Ms O’Brien would later tell the inquiry that Mr White was ‘confused’ and ’emotionally unstable as a result of a head injury’ and that he didn’t want her to report the matter. She would also later say a ‘doctor-patient relationship’ existed and that Mr White didn’t want his complaint to be reported.
In addition, in February 1991, Mr White told the then President of the Leinster Branch of the IASA, Frank McCann about Gibney’s abuse and McCann said he’d deal with it.
McCann, who also abused child swimmers, was later found guilty of murdering his wife and niece, in an attempt to cover up for his abuse in 1996.
According to the Murphy Inquirya parent from a club other than Trojan Swimming Club, where Gibney coached, was told by an assistant coach of Trojan in November 1991 that the gardai and the ISPCC were informed of the allegations in relation to Gibney.
However, later, the ISPCC said it had no record of any such complaint in 1991 or in 1992. The Murphy Report states the first record on the Garda file is dated December 15, 1992.
In addition to Garda character reference and the 1992 US visa, the documents obtained by Mr Muchnick also show that Gibney’s application for US citizenship in 2010 was denied.
During the process of obtaining the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, during a court hearing about the matter, senior federal judge for the Northern District of California, Judge Charles Breyer pondered:
“How is a person permitted to remain in the United States when, in fact, the circumstances of the Ireland experience or what occurred in Ireland are publicly known? That’s number one.
And number two, if, and I would use the word ‘if,’ he gave false answers in connection with an application, how is it that that somehow doesn’t bring into question the term of his initial visa permit or his initial visa?”
In February 1998, Justice Roderick Murphy was appointed by the then Sports Minister Jim McDaid to investigate abuse in swimming.
At the time, Dr Murphy was deeply involved in swimming as he was a member of Glenalbyn Swimming Club, an affiliate of the then IASA (Irish Amateur Swimming Association) – and a part of the Leinster Branch of the IASA.
The Murphy Report, readers will recall, also recounted the experience of a 17-year-old girl who was raped in Tampa, Florida by Gibney.
The report said:
Another witness alleged that she was indecently assaulted on a club trip to Holland in 1990 and raped in Florida in June 1991 by the first named coach [Gibney].
The woman who was raped would later feature in an RTE Prime Time investigation into Gibney in 2006, and recount what happened in Florida.
Footage of this has since been obtained by Mr Muchnick and posted on YouTube.
Readers may also wish to recall that, in 2015, Ms McCarthy, in the Sunday Times, reported:
“A former swimmer has told gardai that a high-ranking official in the sport took her to England for an abortion after George Gibney, the national coach, raped her in 1991.
The woman has told officers conducting a review of the Gibney case that the official warned her not to tell anybody about the abortion.
She said Gibney raped her in a Florida hotel room during a training camp when she was 17. She discovered three months later that she was pregnant and she told the official, who is a professional person and knew Gibney.
She said the official obtained air travel tickets and accompanied her to England. She believes she was taken to an abortion clinic in London and remembers the official giving her pills that made her groggy during the trip.”
Further to the documents obtained by Mr Muchnick, and Ms McCarthy’s 2015 report, the US journalist reported on his website Concussion Inc on December 22:
“In the case of the 1991 Tampa rape, the evidence reportedly includes the victim’s affidavit to Irish police… The 2006 television interview, in which the victim, who is not identified and whose face is obscured, also includes details of the alleged attack.”
“The next question — one that needs to be addressed by public officials in both countries — is how to make sure the Florida prosecutor acquires the affidavit. The state attorney’s Frazier said, “Receiving documents or evidence from another country would likely involve procedures set forth in applicable contracts or treaties between the nations at issue. Those documents would need to be analyzed to determine the specific procedure.”
The United States has a Mutual Legal Assistance agreement with the European Union, of which Ireland is a part. These protocols enable the establishment of “joint investigative teams.”
Yesterday, Mr Muchnick repeated this call, writing:
“There is no excuse for continued failure by governments and journalists to examine the curious circumstances of Gibney’s 1994 diversity lottery visa and his continued resident alien status here even after a 2010 citizenship application — which seems to have failed precisely because he lied on it by withholding information about his 27-count indictment in Ireland for illicit carnal knowledge of minors.
“There is, especially, no excuse for the Garda not to be directed to share with the state attorney of Hillsborough County, Florida, an affidavit that is known to exist by the victim of Gibney’s 1991 rape of a 17-year-old swimmer on a training trip to Tampa.”
The documents obtained by Mr Muchnick can be viewed in full here
A woman tells how she was raped by former Irish swimming coach George Gibney during a swimming trip to Florida in 1991 (top) in a video by US journalist Irvin Muchnick which contains footage from a Prime Time episode on Gibney in 2006 (above)
Last night.
At 8pm Irish time.
US journalist Irvin Muchnick posted a video containing footage from an RTE Prime Time episode – originally broadcast on January 12, 2006 – in which then reporter Clare Murphy tracked down former Irish Olympic swim coach George Gibney in Calistoga, California and confronted him.
It also includes testimonies of some of Gibney’s victims.
Readers will recall Mr Muchnick’s ongoing efforts to secure Gibney’s immigration file from the Department of Homeland Security, under the Freedom of Information Act, in the US.
Gibney was charged with 27 counts of indecency against young swimmers and of carnal knowledge of girls under the age of 15 in April, 1993.
But he sought and won a High Court judicial review in 1994 which quashed all the charges against him.
The review was made possible after a Supreme Court decision that initiating the prosecution against Gibney infringed his right to a fair trial.
After this, Gibney left Ireland for Edinburgh, Scotland and then the US.
The swimming coach was granted a visa during a visit to the United States in 1992 – seemingly aided by a Garda character reference – a year after people who had been abused by him started to speak up and organise themselves.
In addition, a 2010 application by Gibney to obtain US citizenship – some months after Evin Daly, of the Florida-based advocacy group One Child International alerted the US government of Gibney’s past in Ireland – was rejected.
But he remains in the States.
The revelations about his 1992 visa and 2010 citizenship bid have previously been revealed by Mr Irvin.
In the Prime Time footage above, Ms Murphy stated:
“While George Gibney may be notorious at home, his US record is squeaky clean, however local police take his presence so seriously that the area’s FBI field office has been informed.”
Further to this…
Mr Irvin reports:
“Prime Time’s throwaway line that Gibney had a “squeaky clean” record in America is debatable.
In 2015 Commander Dave Pickett of the investigations bureau of the police department in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, gave us the following statement:
‘On September 20th, 2000, the Wheat Ridge Police Department was notified that an alleged sex offender named George Gibney was living within our jurisdiction. Detective Lila Cohen investigated the situation. Detective Cohen contacted the reporting party (RP) who was the president of an accounting company that employed Gibney. Detective Cohen was told that:
* The RP had fired Gibney the day prior
* The RP had discovered concerning information regarding Gibney on the Internet
* Gibney had gone to Peru on behalf of a children’s eye clinic
* Gibney was on an advisory board for the Department of Youth Corrections
* Gibney may be a coach for the North Jeffco Swim Club
Detective Cohen notified the Arvada Police Department where the North Jeffco Swim Club is located. Sergeant Rzappa advised Detective Cohen that she had already received information concerning Gibney. Detective Cohen found that Gibney was on the advisory board of the Metropolitan State College Lab School at Lookout Mountain. Detective Cohen advised the person in charge of the Lab School regarding the allegations that Gibney was a sex offender.
She also advised that the Wheat Ridge Police Department had no indications of specific allegations in Colorado.
Because there were no allegations regarding any crime in this jurisdiction, no investigation outside of notification was done.’
“Jill McGranahan of the Arvada police then told us of an incident from five years before Gibney’s employer reported him to the Wheat Ridge police:
‘In late October, 1995, the APD was notified by a citizen that Mr. Gibney was employed by the North Jeffco Parks and Recreation District, and that he had previously been accused of child abuse in Ireland. The APD confirmed that Mr. Gibney had been charged with child sexual abuse in Ireland, but that he was not convicted on any of the charges. During its investigation, the APD learned that Mr. Gibney was suspected of possibly pinching (or snapping the swimsuit of) a North Jeffco swimmer.
‘The APD investigated this allegation, but was unable to establish that a crime had occurred. Shortly thereafter, the APD learned that Mr. Gibney was no longer employed by North Jeffco. The APD had no other involvement in this matter.’
Mr Muchnick concludes:
“Many people, in and out of law enforcement, in Ireland and the U.S. alike, have had Gibney on watch lists, formal or otherwise, for a long time. The missing piece remains the revival of the 1990s prosecution of him in Ireland.
“The original prosecution collapsed thanks to a Supreme Court statute-of-limitations ruling that is not, to put it mildly, destined to go down in the annals of thoughtful jurisprudence: one of the sitting justices, Susan Denham (later the chief justice), did not recuse herself even though she was the sister of Gibney’s lawyer, Patrick Gageby.
“Nearly a quarter of a century later, it is time to bring the Gibney nightmare to a close. It is time for the Irish Garda’s Director of Public Prosecutions to move purposefully on the call of Maureen O’Sullivan, a Teachta Dála (member of Parliament), to reconsider both the old criminal charges against Gibney and the many new ones on which information has emerged since he first got off the hook.
“It is time for the American legislators most closely associated with awareness of sexual assault in general, and statutory solutions for the widespread problem of amateur sports coach sex abuse in particular, to step up to the plate and assist TD O’Sullivan in these efforts.
“The legislators I have in mind include Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Jackie Speier.
“Finally, it is time to hold accountable whoever in the American swimming establishment might have been responsible for enabling Gibney’s long safe harbor here.
“The ugly truth is that George Gibney is no longer just another name in the half-buried history of the dark side of youth sports. He is, officially, a two-nation affair of state.”
George Gibney (top) and US journalist Irvin Muchnick
Readers may recall the exhaustive efforts of American journalist Irvin Muchnick to obtain former Irish swimming coach George Gibney’s immigration file from the Department of Homeland Security, under the Freedom of Information Act, in the US.
Gibney was charged with 27 counts of indecency against young swimmers and of carnal knowledge of girls under the age of 15 in April, 1993.
But he sought and won a High Court judicial review in 1994 which quashed all the charges against him.
The review was made possible after a baffling Supreme Court decision that initiating the prosecution against Gibney infringed his right to a fair trial.
After this, Gibney left Ireland for Edinburgh, Scotland and then Florida where he went on to abuse.
The swimming coach was granted a visa during a visit to the United States in 1992 – seemingly aided by a Garda character reference – a year after people who had been abused by him started to speak up and organise themselves.
In addition, a 2010 application by Gibney to obtain US citizenship – some months after Evin Daly, of the Florida-based advocacy group One Child International alerted the US government of Gibney’s past in Ireland – was rejected.
But he remains in the States.
The revelations about his 1992 visa and 2010 citizenship bid have previously been revealed by Mr Irvin.
Further to this..
Mr Irvin, who writes on Concussion Inc, reports:
“Concussion Inc. has acquired explosive archival video, which shows that George Gibney has been under watch by American law enforcement agencies since at least 2006. The video will go live at noon PST [8pm Irish time]
“The video has surpassing significance during the pendency of my Freedom of Information Act case seeking additional material on the U.S. immigration files of the former Irish Olympic swimming head coach who is arguably the most notorious child sex abuser in a sports world with too many of them.
“I prevailed last year in Muchnick v. Department of Homeland Security; the government’s appeal of Judge Charles Breyer’s decision is at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“After the video begins streaming online, I’ll be publishing additional interpretation and pointers.”
