2. 'We've Been Expecting You'

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This podcast refers to child sexual abuse and contains interviews that some listeners may find upsetting as well as some strong language right from the start. Episode 2. We've been expecting you. They were definitely around here when I saw them, but they were just inching out. Shit, they could have gone around to the left cast, fuck. Will we go to Montgomery anyway, will we? Yeah, yeah. You think this is the way back to their house? Fuck, that's the way back to their house. Yeah, yeah.

Bollocks. In the days after Cass and I first saw George Gibney, Cass being our producer Ciarán Cassidy, by the way, we tried to find out as much as we can. about Gibney's life today. He'll be back in the gaff, you know? Yeah, yeah. When the time is right, I'll try and talk to him. But we want to avoid a doorstep that leads to nothing and alerts him to us.

We want to understand how he lives his life today. Where he works. Is he involved in swimming? Does he have access to children? So each morning, we park up opposite the entrance to his housing development. Gibney now lives with another man and leaves the house only by car. And some days, he doesn't leave at all. So, as we wait, we make some calls around the area.

He tends to come, you know, he gets in his car in the garage, opens the garage door, drives out, closes it, drives away. They keep to themselves, they go in and out, they're not social, they're not neighborly. Couldn't be, surely. No, no. It's exactly the same car. Answer? How do I answer this thing? Here we go. Hello? Yeah, it's Mark speaking. Okay. Okay.

But I don't think many people know. Things keep popping up, you know, about him. We're wondering, you know, how, why, where does he get his money from? And, you know, where... You know, he's got a credit card here. I don't know if he's got a Social Security number. Mark, I can't even stand to look at the man. You know, and I know you have to be forgiving and forgiveness, but, you know, he needs to... stand up for what he did to those poor.

Okay. I'm with Gary O'Toole, and we're taking a journey he first took decades ago, after that talk with Chalky White on the Plains of Perth. So at this point... Gary was a double Olympian, but he was also just 24. He was still a student. He believed Chalky, and he also believed there were more victims of George Gibney out there. I had nothing to lose, actually, is the real truth of the matter. I had nothing to my name. I was going into my last couple of years in medicine.

It's just the way it was then, you know, and I knew that I had to do it and I had to just go for it, you know, in total immersion. Gary had one major thing he had to do first. He went back to his old swimming club Trojans, where he'd been coached by Gibney since 1977. He knew Gibney would be there, so he decided the time was right now to confront him.

five until seven in the swimming pool on a Tuesday. Walked onto the pool bank and he left me standing there for about, I'd say about two minutes. He was, you know, pretending to coach. I was just standing there. That didn't bother me. So I just waited. And I could see the parents looking at me. And then he walked over to me, sidled up to me. He was standing there and I said, I'm just calling in to tell you that I'm leaving. He looked at me and he said, like...

As if he was the most shocked man in the universe. And he said, why? And I said, I think you know why I'm leaving. And I just turned and left. I didn't look back. Didn't look back.

We're still straight on here, aren't we? We're still straight on, yes. So it should be salvaged at Leakslip there. Yeah, yeah. There we go. Gary's next move was to get in contact with parents of the current swimmers of the club. Some believed him. Some refused to listen and some got angry. But his conscience was clear and he had a plan. He wanted to speak to as many people as possible that may have been a risk from the late 60s right up to the present day. And then, if they wanted...

the survivors themselves could perhaps build a case against Gibney. Well, I knew some of the swimmers because I had been swimming with him from about 1977. I knew those swimmers from 1977 onwards and thought I could connect with some of those. So that's a 15-year period. Before that, I didn't know an awful lot. And Chalky's wife...

actually filled me in on an awful lot of people in that time period. So she gave me names and she said, you might want to talk to this person, you might want to talk to that person. One of the first houses Gary visited unannounced is the house we're travelling to now. He hasn't rung this doorbell for 27 years. I remember meeting one woman and calling to her door and finding her address and then, you know...

Eventually finding where the house was and I called out to her on a Saturday night, I think it was. Knocked on the door and her husband answered the door. This one? Yeah. I said hello. My name's Gary O'Toole and I'm looking for... I said her name. And he said, yeah, she's in the back. We've been expecting you for years. I was relieved to be able to do something, finally, about something that I've lived with for a long time. Hannah is 35 this year.

I remember being in Switzer's expecting her going up an escalator and seeing George going down an escalator holding a little girl's hand. And that image, you know, I was, oh, I thought he's still doing it. I knew in my heart it wasn't something he was going to stop. I don't know what it was about. seeing him holding a child by the hand, that image of him. And so it was actually brilliant that Gary came to my door.

This is Burr Carly. She was a little girl in Guinness Swimming Club when Chalky was there in the late 60s. Back then she was Bernadette Byrne. No, we are older. Today she's a special needs assistant in the secondary school. Burr was a proper swimming talent too, an Irish junior backstroke record holder, although she plays down all her swimming achievements now. She's ready to talk publicly about her abuse. And when we chat, she always has her husband Paul by her side.

So I think we were probably just ready. We were ready, yeah. So that's 28 years. Is it? Since you left on my door. So 92, what do we know? Is it 92 or 91? 92, yeah. So 27 years. Yeah, almost to the month. We spent some time leafing through some of Burr's old photo albums. So this one is 1967 and it was in the ivy baths. Maybe just describe the photograph there, Burr, will you? Yeah, I'm nine. I'm young looking. I'm a baby, really, when I see it now. And that's 69, isn't it? 67, that is, yeah.

I do know he had started abusing me there. Tell me about the gaps that I'm seeing here. That gap is... I'm marrying 24 hour swim team with coach. But there's been four photographs ripped out so far. Talk to me about what happened there. Yeah, well, they would have featured Gibney. I often... wonder what was I going to be like? Like I'm like this up to age nine and that the day he touched me, did he, you know, squeeze and kill?

whatever I was going to be. Yeah. You look back at things with your own eyes and mind as an adult, and it is good to see, well, no, I was a child. When I was training in Marion College, sometimes, you know, at the end of a training session, so there was all boys and just me or maybe one or two. And at the end of maybe an hour.

of hard training. George would say to me, go into the dressing rooms and wait. And so I would be in there, like in the cold, and I wasn't to get dressed. So I had to go into a female dressing room on my own. and it could be an hour waiting for him to come. Then you knew what was coming. Look at those little wooden starting blocks. This is an awful lot here now. It's hard to believe that you just did what you were told. But I mean, obviously now I know it was, I was waiting.

He was waiting for the whole place to clear of everybody else. And you just obediently went in there and waited. Do you know, I even sometimes picture... You know, that I was going to school and just living even. While it's like, you know, a parallel of... The horrible abuse is going on and yet I'm getting up and I'm training and I'm going to school and I'm doing homework. That kind of, like, I can see myself just...

I think it's a funny world, isn't it, to kind of picture somebody keeping all that as well in. You know, I can see all my friends around me. my sisters around me and kind of thinking, that is a funny kind of bubble that you're locked in. You know, it's not like a situation where you're locked in a bunker and... and nobody, you know, that you're fed through a window. I was living, I was going to school, I was, you know, whatever. But locked in, I suppose, into that world that...

of powerlessness. But the number of times that it happened to me was a lot. It was... Probably three years, probably daily. Burr, when you think about it, when that night that Gary came in, what comes into your head? I instantly trusted him. I just instantly thought, this is good. You know, it was kind of like he was gathering, you know, as he went. It was all support, I would feel. You know, an awful, awful secret.

knotted up in you for years is awful. So it's kind of like the start of, it was the start of an unravelling relief. that something was going to happen. Obviously, I didn't know what. Thanks again for everything that you did. Honestly, honestly, you did a great job. Yeah, I do. God bless. See you. See you soon.

You know, I left that house and I got into the car and I was a little bit stunned, I have to say. I was a little bit perplexed because... It was the one thing that I didn't expect was to be welcomed with such open arms. And when I sat down, she said, look, I know why you're here. Just tell me what I have to do. and she was just waiting for someone to come along and gather the troops so that this horrendous situation could come to an end.

After leaving Burrs, Gary knew he was on the right track, so he kept searching. Some of the others I just cold-called to their house. Others I would phone ahead and see. Others I would ring their place of work and ask them to meet me. or contact friends or ask their friends would they mind giving me a phone call or leaving a number. It's a little bit of detective work, but eventually you can find someone who knew someone who knew where this person might live.

Burke hardly swam back in Chalky's era, but Gary believed Gibney had abused some of his own former teammates, swimmers he'd regularly trained with himself more recently at Trojans. Between the jigs and the reels, I... I had a list of people that I wanted to get in contact with, and I wanted to speak to them personally wherever possible. And that's what I did.

I was looking for their having been isolated at times, having heard that they might have had personal training sessions with them at times. Babysitting for him was another big thing, so that he would have invited them into the bosom of his own family. They were the triggers. that he would have been as affectionate to them publicly. So this outwardly public showing of affection, which could be interpreted as being a...

a magnificent gesture from a superb coach. Anyone that had any kind of treatment in that fashion, I singled them out.

We're still straight on here. We're still straight on, yes. One of the people Gary singled out was the girl he told us about in episode one. She was a close friend who he used to exchange postcards and letters with back in his early teens. But they fell apart, and he never really knew why. And I knew that... She no longer lived in Dublin, but I didn't know where she lived. It was more personal for me, and I certainly put an awful lot more thought into it before I contacted her.

inside her, the engine on or off her? The car is perfect. I racked my brain, racked my brain trying to remember her phone number that I hadn't called for eight years. And I said, come on, you got it. It's only seven numbers, you know, and you used to dial it once, twice a week at least. So I racked my brains. And all I could remember was that...

All her numbers were divisible by three, except for the first two numbers. So I had the first two numbers, so then I only had five numbers to get. So it's either three, six or nine. And so I racked my brains, let my fingers... you know, just hit the buttons that they wanted to hit. And when I called the number, her mother answered. And I said, hello, I'm looking for... And she said, well, you know, she's...

She's moved now. She lives down in another city. And I said, well, can I have her address? And she said, of course. So she gave me the address. And she said, you don't want her phone number? And I said, no, just her address.

So when I hung up from her mother, I wrote a letter to her and I put it in an envelope. And then I took that envelope and put it in another envelope with a cover letter saying, Dear, and I said her name, I'm writing to you about things that might have happened to you whilst we were swimming together in Trojan and things that George Gibney might have done to you.

If you know nothing about what I might be talking about, do not open the letter on the inside of this envelope. But if you know what I'm talking about, please open this letter.

There was one summer that he would stay at my house after the morning session until the evening session. It was just easier and then we'd pop down again in the evening and like we just... We just had such a lovely summer. And then the next summer, he went away to America. And so I was writing away to him. I travelled to Cork to meet Trish Kearney. And I brought something from Gary. Does that look familiar? Oh, my God. Where did you get that?

Gary held onto it. He said to me, please show and give it to Trish. I'd like her to know that I really did care enough to keep it safe for nearly 40 years, but she should have it now. Trish was a major swimming talent. When she was 15, she won 10 goals at the Irish National Senior Championships, and she was a real prospect for the Olympics in 1984. Back then, she was known as Patricia McCahill. Today, she's a talented writer.

and her first book is about to be published. Wow. I must have been about... That was when I was... 15, was I? He's so funny, I can't believe he kept that. Wow, I don't remember sending him that. How does it make you feel? Jeez, it's just funny. Like, you know, as I say, his friendship was huge to me and the loss of it was huge. Would you read the postcard?

Hi, Gary. I'm having a fab time. The weather's just fantastic. This is only the second day, but the tan is coming along great. I missed training when I was at home and I'm looking forward to seeing you again in October. Try to keep your tan till I see you. Love children's treasure. I think he sent him there hoping that it would isolate the two of us or kind of separate us. And then Gary came back. And very quickly after he came back, things had changed completely and everything had changed.

When I came back, he was incredibly confused because he'd had these letters and that wasn't the person he met. He was very cross that I wasn't, you know...

I was kind of running away from him. And we were on the deck. Of course, all that was in my head was that I knew Gibney was looking at me. And Gary was just so cross. And I just remember Gibney's eyes were just... boring into me and especially after what had just happened there had been an incident would give me just before that out there earlier on the day yeah i was raped in a toilet

All the abuse was daily. Two times a day at least, maybe. And it could be everything and anything. So it was pretty severe. It's just horrendous. Horrendous.

When I look back at it, I wonder, you know, how you can live, how you can go to school and sit in school, how you can sit in your house, how you can go to bed at night, how you can... talk to your family, having that just happen to you. You're talking about me going to a pool, training. And then, like, he was just stalking me everywhere. Even at lunchtime, you know, I went home every day. So he'd keep on driving along the road as I walked and he'd just crawl along.

with his window down. He was ringing constantly on the phone and was the phone in the hall. And like if I didn't answer, he'd hang up and he'd just ring and ring and ring like it could ring nonstop. That didn't last for long. Like he generally just came to the house and he'd be outside the back. He'd be checking that you were in your room. He'd be seeing in the windows. He'd be... You'd see him. I'd know he was there. I can remember one day in particular, cycling school, bawling, crying.

after a horrendous morning with him at the pool and just thinking, oh my gosh, imagine now when I'm old, this is still going to be my life. I never for a moment thought I could get away from him. So you walk every day? Yeah, yeah, in the morning. But I love it. I love this one because this one has the woods, the fields, and then we're coming down to the sea now. For Trish, the abuse didn't stop at school. She grew up when she went to college. She became a nurse. But Gibney was still there.

like the madness of still having Gibney in my life at that stage at 19 years of age like and you know he was he was kind of very unhinged at that stage between about 18 19 in particular Like he was just stalking me everywhere. Like he was on the wards, he was outside my car. There was different shifts I could have finished at, but like he would just be there. Because like he didn't know what time I finished.

So I think I probably felt a danger for some time. I remember there was some girl killed and her mum, and I remember thinking... Oh my God, that's going to be me and nobody will even know why he's done that. Any time a car slowed down behind me, I thought, this is it now, that's him, he's going to kill us. There were incidents that were one in particular where I got in the car and drove off and he didn't speak for ages.

We went further out. We went out towards the Dublin Mountains. And I, you know, we all have an instinct, you know, to survive. And I was. I was kind of very aware that I felt I was in danger. We stopped and he started talking and then he got very cross. And I remember him grabbing me in the car. And it was just that physical, you know, moment.

I remember thinking he was going to kill me. And then I remember when he grabbed me, just knowing he's not going to kill me, I'm going to kill him. Oh, I lost it. And I got... Very violent. And he opened the door and let me out. And he drove off. And that's it. I don't remember coming home. I don't remember anything. That was the end. Never. And once, you know, once I broke free kind of thing, I just...

That the real me, you know, was never going back. That was the end. Trish left. She moved to Australia. She got married. She began living her life. She was free. But I do feel very lucky to have... I've lived way more of my life after Gibney than during Gibney. That was, you know, maybe not even, what, a seven-year period. And that would be tragic, you know, if that took away everything. That's me, my philosophy.

Then years later, she got that letter from Gary with the envelope inside the envelope. I got a registered letter and I'd never had a registered letter in my life. So I remember I got this registered letter. And at that stage, I was having the flashbacks and things, you know, I was having memories, even though I was ignoring them. And so when I got this letter and I opened it, I just remember reading things like George Gibney.

abuse. There was different words kind of jumped out. From my point of view, I saw that letter and all I saw was George Gibney, other people, abuse. And I recall that very, very quickly I was going to the guards. Even though... It had been obviously so private for me or so huge for me that I had told nobody. Once I knew, once it had been articulated to me, I had no mercy. I just...

Guards. Soon after Trish made contact with the guards or the Irish police, things suddenly started moving quickly. I remember I was flying out to Los Angeles on... in December and I picked up the Irish Times and I saw this little piece in the Irish Times that said a man had been arrested this morning or yesterday morning in Cabin Tilly and brought to the local Garda stations being questioned about child sexual abuse and it said a senior sports figure.

So I recognised who that was and that was the first time I allowed myself a little fist pump or a little bit of celebration because then I realised something was happening but it wasn't until I saw it in the papers that I felt... This is for real. This is actually happening. And that's when I felt, yes, you know, we're going somewhere with this. By December 1992.

Six former swimmers made sworn statements to Irish police alleging that they'd been abused by George Gibney. They included Burr, Trish and Chalky. Babers were so careful. So it was always just a wee tiny column saying whatever. And I did wait. I remember waiting all right for my charges because my charges weren't put to him initially.

They gave the first lot and then there was another. And then finally I saw a little tiny thing of there was more charges and I saw the dates and I knew they were mine. And that gave me joy just to think, there you go, you bucko. Now you know that I've come forward. and that you know that Patricia McCahill spoke up. The walls had finally started to close in on George Gibney.

He was faced with a total of 27 charges of child sexual abuse that spanned different eras, beginning as far back as 1967. But he had yet to appear in court. And it turns out... that Gibney was already planning his escape. For a list of organisations in the UK that can provide support for survivors of sexual abuse, go to bbc.co.uk.

forward slash action line. If you are a former swimmer with George Gibney or have any information, however minor, that you feel could help the producers, please contact us confidentially That's whereisgeorgegibney, all one word, at bbc.co.uk. And you can find us on social at Second Captains. Where Is George Gibney is a Second Captains production for BBC Sounds.

The series is written and produced by me, Mark Horgan, and Ciarán Cassidy. It's co-produced with Maria Horgan, and editing is also by Ciarán Cassidy. Research and fact-checking is by Cillian Downe. Our composer is Michael Fleming. And sound mixing is by Jare MacDonald. Our theme tune is by Aaron Desner. The executive producer for the BBC is Dylan Haskins and the commissioning editor is Jason Phipps. You can listen to episode three of Where Is George Gibney. It's called Bail.

from next Thursday, 10th of September. You can subscribe on the free BBC Sounds app. A man has been shot dead by police. I want to know why he was killed. I'm Rabin Azhar and what I uncovered was gang violence, money laundering and drugs. There's been another incident. Sounds like something out of The Godfather. Hometown. Listen on the BBC Sounds app.

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