George Gibney, an Irish Olympic Swimming coach from the 1984 and 1988, was arrested this afternoon in Florida on more than 50 sexual abuse charges.
The case first began in 1993 when he was charged with 27 counts of sexual abuse related crimes including ‘indecency’ and ‘having carnal knowledge of girls under the age of 15’. The case was dismissed due to the length of time since the crimes had allegedly occurred, but in 1997, new allegations were made and a new investigation was opened.
Gibney moved to the United States in 1995, where he even coached for a USA Swimming age-group team in suburban Denver. In 2000, a Colorado police report addressed concerns that Gibney was participating in a ‘pedophile ring’ that traveled with children from his Catholic church’s parish to Peru. Journalist Irvin Muchnik opened a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, case into this report more than a decade later, and FBI agents were sent to Peru to investigate afterwards.
In 2020, this whole case was brought back into the forefront due to a BBC podcast titled Where is George Gibney. As a result of the podcast, 18 more victims came forward with new information. This led to the gardai (the Irish police) to submit a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2023.
The Irish Times reports that late last year, the gardai submitted an extradition request to U.S. authorities. After receiving the request, U.S. officials had to review and process the paperwork before complying with the arrest, which they did today in Florida.
Gibney will be detained in the U.S. until he appears in court, where he can either contest his extradition or accept it and return to Ireland and face charges.
The BBC podcast refers to this case as “one of the largest sexual abuse scandals in sports history”, along with the Larry Nassar case in USA gymnastics and the Barry Bernell case in UK football.
