Karen Leach: It’s a relief to see another ‘god’ of swimming jailed, but I still have many questions

When I was a little girl, I had a dream. That dream was to swim for Ireland at the Olympics. I believed I could do it, and my mam and dad truly believed in me too. The Irish Olympic swimming coach Derry O’Rourke saw me swimming at the community games in 1980, when I was 10. After that he started calling my home to speak with Mam and Dad, asking me to join his swimming club, saying he was the best swimming coach in Ireland and that he would make my dream come true and get me to the Olympics. You can just imagine the pride Mam and Dad felt: here was the Irish Olympic coach ringing, wanting me to join his team of swimmers.It must have been the same pride and excitement other swimmers and their families felt when they got the phone call from George Gibney – who was finally jailed this week for more than 15 years for the sexual abuse of four girls in the 1970s and 1980s – promising to make them a star. Gibney’s reign of terror was in the Glenalbyn swimming pool in Stillorgan, Newpark Sports Centre in Blackrock, and at his home, where girls were babysitting his children.READ MOREMy circle of hell was the swimming club at the King’s Hospital in Palmerstown, where O’Rourke was treated like God, and later, in his car, in hotels, in the corridors of Newpark swimming pool and, once, while I was having my photograph taken after winning a competition. The very first time that I swam in the pool, I knew my swimming would never be the same again. I remember realising right away that this was different; this is serious, no more fun. This was about hard training and winning, and nothing less was going to be acceptable. That day was the start of the end of my very happy childhood.O’Rourke abused me sexually, mentally, physically and emotionally while I was swimming for his club. Whatever he said went. He had total power over everything and everyone. No one answered O’Rourke back. No one even questioned him.He had total power over me, over my swimming and over my life. Because he was so good at what he was doing, everyone trusted him and believed everything he said. Which meant that what he wanted, he got.How notorious predator George Gibney finally faced justice My last couple of years in swimming were terrible. I was swimming very badly. I just had no power in my body at all. I had no energy, I was in constant pain, and I wasn’t sleeping at night either. I would go to training every day and try my best, but I couldn’t get my body to move. I would swim up and down the pool, crying tears into my swimming goggles. What was wrong with me? O’Rourke told Mam and Dad to take me to different doctors to find out why I was in so much pain. Nobody could find anything physically wrong with me. It was only later I understood the reason I was in so much pain: it was what he was doing to me. I was deeply depressed, there was no life in me any more, even though I was desperately struggling to live. I eventually gave up swimming in 1987, when I was 17.[ ‘He needs to die in prison’: Survivor of George Gibney child sex abuse reacts to sentencingOpens in new window ]I never told anyone what O’Rourke did to me until after he was sent to prison for 12 years in 1998 for the sexual abuse of 11 girls. I didn’t even want to tell myself. When I did finally speak out about what he had done to me, the world I had tried so hard to hold together for so long just came tumbling down around me. When O’Rourke’s story broke in the Irish newspapers, I remember my mam sitting at the kitchen table reading it. She stopped and looked at me. She said: “This is my little girl I am reading about, this is my child.” She was heartbroken. I have lost so many things in my life over what he did to me. I have paid a very high price for the sport I loved so much. After I went to court in 2000, I ended up being admitted to psychiatric care, and I remained an outpatient for a decade. But my biggest loss is what it did to my wonderful mam, dad and brothers. It broke their hearts and their spirits. In 2001, my mam told me that she loved me and she was sorry she didn’t look after me when I was a little girl, that all she wanted for me was to be happy. Four days later my mam’s body was taken out of the canal by a fireman. My beautiful mam was gone. She was amazing, a beautiful lady and a wonderful mother. The pain of my mam’s death by suicide hurt all of us so much. My dad never recovered either. He would say on many occasions, “Karen, I took you there [to swimming], and Mam is dead.” When I sat with my dad as he was dying, I held his hand and thanked him for being the best dad ever. He turned his head, looked at me and started crying. He said, “I don’t know about that Karen,” and I knew exactly what he meant. Nobody wants to talk about the reality of abuse – how it happens or what the full spectrum of it actually is: the bullying, the power imbalances, the wilful blindness by organisations, the reality that it could happen againFor the past 19 years, I have been working as a SafeSport advocate and an ambassador for the Voice project (Voices for Truth and Dignity: Combatting Sexual Violence in European Sport through the Voices of Those Affected). I am on the Council of Europe/European Union pool of experts on sexual violence in sport. Unfortunately not everyone wants someone like me around; someone with a strong voice. I don’t always get a very warm welcome in Ireland. Swimmers who were abused by Irish coaches have never received an official, public apology from anyone in Irish sport. When I raised this, I was told by someone in Irish swimming that they would “not apologise daily for what happened”. But we carry our pain with us every minute of every day.So while it is a relief to finally see Gibney go to jail – more than 30 years after the story appeared in the newspapers, and 50 after his earliest known crimes – there are still too many unanswered questions. He fled Ireland in 1993 and would likely have remained living there, were it not for the work of Mark Horgan and others on the Where is George Gibney? podcast. Why did the legal system let him go in 1993? Who helped him to leave and start a new life in Florida? How many more children did he abuse? How many more did O’Rourke abuse? How many did not survive the abuse by the so-called “gods” of Irish swimming?And, the biggest question of all: are we doing enough to protect children now? Conversations about safeguarding are easy. People are happy to list off policies and procedures and training. But even now nobody wants to talk about the reality of abuse – how it happens or what the full spectrum of it actually is: the bullying, the power imbalances, the wilful blindness by organisations, the reality that it could happen again. I want people who have been abused to know there is hope. After 40 years of not being able to go near a swimming pool, I am now teaching children swimming. Before they even get into the pool for their first lesson, I teach children what to do if they need help. I am the adult I needed when I was a little girl. My next challenge is to get back into the swimming pool, to learn to love being in the water again. I haven’t achieved it yet, but I’ll get there.Karen Leach is a SafeSport advocate and a qualified psychotherapist. She is on the Council of Europe/European Union pool of experts on sexual violence in sport.