Derry O’Rourke, the former international swimming coach, has been jailed for 10 years for the rape of a teenager he was coaching in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ms Justice Melanie Greally sentenced O’Rourke at the Central Criminal Court on Wednesday following his conviction by unanimous jury verdict of one count of rape and 11 counts of indecent assault of the victim between 1989 and 1990, when she was aged between 13 and 14.
A Garda investigation began after the woman made a complaint in 2021.
Ms Justice Greally told O’Rourke the admission of his wrongdoing and his apology “rings hollow”.
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He had approached his victim as he supervised an open swim and told her she “had potential” and offered to coach her. He had “groomed” the girl, who was vulnerable at the time and negotiating a very difficult time in her life, telling her to train alone in the swim lane closest to the changing rooms.
The first sign of the abuse to come was O’Rourke watching the girl in the shower and this progressed to raping her, telling her she was a “good girl” but to “be quiet” and not tell anyone. From the day she was raped, the girl stopped swimming.
Passing sentence, Ms Justice Greally said the victim “went into decline socially and academically” from the time of the abuse. However, she had faced O’Rourke with “immense courage and dignity” on Tuesday when she challenged him during her victim impact statement to the court.
Ms Justice Greally said while O’Rourke had a series of medical conditions and was taking “copious amounts” of medication, no one condition required very close or urgent medical management.
He was a man with “a large number of convictions for similar offences” and - given his age and isolation from his family - was “unlikely to receive any visits in prison”.
The aggravating factors in the case included O’Rourke’s history, the number of times he abused his victim and the duration and persistence of those attacks. He had “groomed” the girl in a “premeditated” way “exposing his child victim to the risk of pregnancy”. It was clear O’Rourke had been a serial child abuser of a period of 13 years.
Ms Justice Greally jailed O’Rourke for 10 years for rape and for 40 months on each, but two, of the indecent assault charges. On the remaining two indecent assault charges she sentenced him to five years for each. All of the sentences will run concurrently, meaning his headline sentence is one of 10 years, of which O’Rourke will serve at least seven years after remission is factored in.
The sentencing took place just 24 hours after O’Rourke’s victim addressed him directly in her victim impact statement to the court, telling him: “You took so much that was not yours to take and nothing will ever give it back”.
Now in her 40s, the woman said the abuse “changed my world, my entire existence for the worst”. Her experiences at the hands of O’Rourke had played a “huge” part in her choosing not to have children. She did not want any child of hers to suffer the way she had.
After O’Rourke raped her in a room in her school, that experience made her “create a mask for myself” that “kept me silent” and “moulded my life for years”. She had been unable to tell anyone and went on to leave her home place, and then left Ireland.
She still lived outside the country and she felt sad about this as “there is still so much beauty and kindness here”. But O’Rourke’s abuse had “tainted” and “broken that belief of kindness and security”.
O’Rourke (78), with an address at Bailieboro, Co Cavan, previously served sentences for sexual offences against other children, including rape.
He was previously jailed in January 1998 for 12 years after he pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 29 offences involving 11 girls on dates between 1976 and 1992. The charges involved defilement, sexual assault and indecent assault.
In August 2000, he was sentenced to four years on 19 charges involving six girls aged between 10 and 19 who were all being coached by him. The indecent and sexual assaults took place on dates unknown between July 1970 and December 1992.
In January 2005, O’Rourke was jailed for 10 years after admitting two charges of rape and two counts of indecent assault on dates between 1975 and 1978 in relation to the victim. That sentence was backdated to March 13th, 2000. He has not come to any Garda attention since his release from prison in 2007, the court heard.
The victim at the centre of the latest case said when O’Rourke offered to coach her, when she was aged about 13 years - and “looked like a child” - she was “thrilled that someone had noticed her”.
The initial stages of abuse involved O’Rourke carrying out what he called “muscle checks”, moving his hands up and down her breasts. The victim, at that time, believed these checks were “legitimate”. He later told her he needed to do additional tests which involved him digitally penetrating her after the breast “checks”.
When she resumed training after the summer holidays, O’Rourke on one occasion took her to the room where the “checks” took place and raped her. She was “in a state of shock”, felt “awful” and “violated” and that “the trust had been broken” and she felt unable to tell anyone.
O’Rourke denied the charges and denied having any knowledge of the victim. Patricia McLoughlin SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, on Tuesday submitted that the offences merit a headline sentence ranging from 15 years to life imprisonment.
Michael Bowman SC, for O’Rourke, submitted the appropriate headline sentence was between 10 and 15 years. He said O’Rourke did not have previous convictions at the time of the offences. He said O’Rourke accepted the jury’s verdict, apologises to the victim for what happened and acknowledges her truthfulness and the impact of the offences on her.
The court was told O’Rourke has a number of health conditions, his relationship had ended, he has no meaningful engagement with his six children and lives alone.
O’Rourke had instructed that he himself was inappropriately interfered with by a schoolteacher when he was eight, counsel added.
In her statement to the court on Tuesday, the victim said O’Rourke would “never realise the way you made me feel and the uncertainties, the inadequacies you installed in me”. She said his “deliberate grooming and abuse of me as a child” led in part to her wanting to escape her life and that she had taken an overdose of sleeping tablets.
The woman said she is “only just learning how to let my pain, my hurt, my anger through the gag you made me wear for so many years”. She had repressed her feelings for a long time and “swallowed the past like a good girl” until she started to “slowly, painfully, regretfully” piece together what had happened.
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