George Gibney’s liberty is a stain on Irish society. We know this. We’ve known it, on some level, for more than a quarter of a century. The fact that he was able to abuse young swimmers and escape conviction for his crimes is depressing in and of itself. That he was later able to find safe passage to a new life in the US, to live out his days unruffled by the destruction he left in his wake, is enough to turn your stomach.
We did this. Don’t be in any doubt about it. We did it through our system of justice, which in its wisdom and in our name let Gibney slip through the cracks to walk free. We did it too through our history of deference towards figures of authority, our disinclination to believe the worst of people in top positions. Gibney was the most famous sports coach in the country for a while – the gall of him to abuse children while carrying such a high profile was equalled only by the latitude Irish society conferred upon him at the time.
Those days are mostly gone now. Gibney was an appalling chapter of Irish history, but in all truth, history is all he was – and largely forgotten history, if we’re brutally honest about it. Or at least he was until Mark Horgan of Second Captains decided we should be better than that. Along with producer Ciaran Cassidy, Horgan went and pulled Gibney out from the depths of the archives again and held him up in front of the world in last year’s podcast Where Is George Gibney?.
Trish Kearney is one of the heroes of the podcast, a survivor of Gibney’s terror and a stunning reminder of what humans can endure. Gibney first raped her when she was 13 and continued to do so throughout her teenage years. She was one of the survivors upon whose sworn affidavits Johnny Watterson was able to publish his landmark exposé of Gibney for the Sunday Tribune in 1994.
Swiss army knife
Above Water is her memoir, a book she had in the works before the podcast came along and destined now to find a wider audience because of its impact. Kearney is a terrific writer, a Swiss army knife of styles and approaches. She is soulful and gentle when writing about her parents and her home (which is a character in and of itself). She is thoughtful and demanding when writing about her inner self and the hole she had to pull herself out of. She is disgusted and brimming with contempt for Gibney throughout.
It makes for a completely compelling book. It was never going to be an easy read but Kearney doesn’t make it a trial for you to sit through either. What could so easily have been a slog is, instead, a crisply told story of survival. The agony of a life lived through and in the shadow of abuse is all here, but so too is the route she took out of it. Above Water is no accidental title – this is ultimately a story of Trish Kearney’s triumph.
To get there, however, she had to come through a recovery that made unconscionable demands of her long after the physical torture ended. Like all abuse, Gibney’s was an invasion of the mind as well as the body. Kearney writes arrestingly of the terror involved, both as a teenager and in later life.
“During those years, I lived in a state of perpetual fear and anxiety. I became wary, watching out for his car parked up the road, on permanent alert in case he drove by while I was in company and caught me laughing. Cycling or walking alone, to or from the swimming pool or school, he’d stop to talk to me or pick me up, throwing my bike into the boot.
“If I were in company he’d pass, flashing a warning look in my direction to let me know he had seen me. So fearful was I of his disapproval, I often chose to walk home alone, despite the fact my team-mates were walking in the same direction. Even as I neared the safety of my home I was on edge in case he was waiting for me.”
Psychological damage
Later, as a grown woman, she freezes when her seven-year-old daughter Aoife asks to join their local swimming club in Cork. By unfathomable coincidence, it happens to be the same pool where, as a 15-year-old, she had a pivotal encounter with her best friend, Gary O’Toole. Unable to bring herself to tell O’Toole about Gibney’s abuse, their friendship ruptured on the same pool deck that young, oblivious Aoife now wanted to bring back into her life.
“Driving into the pool’s car park an hour later, I knew I wasn’t ready for this, and my fear only intensified as I opened the door into the pool’s reception area. A cocktail of chlorine and heat hit me, the remembered smell filling my lungs with a fear bordering on terror…
“Having shown Aoife the way into the pool, I retraced my steps to reception, walked through to the viewing gallery and made my way to sit opposite the group Aoife was swimming in. For the briefest moment I paused, close to the spot where cross words, hurt and misunderstanding had robbed fifteen-year-old me of my friendship with Gary. Sadness washed over me as I remembered that young pair and all we lost that day.”
Ultimately, these are the passages – and there are plenty more like them in the book – that give the clearest insight into the psychological damage done by abusers such as Gibney. Trish eventually found peace and she found love and she found humanity. By the end, you can only be genuinely delighted that she got there.
But more times than I could count as I read Above Water, my mind wandered to all the Trish Kearneys and all those who never found their peace and all that endless, heartless damage done. Not just by Gibney, not just by abusive sports coaches, but by rapists everywhere. There is a life sentence involved, regardless of whether or not the perpetrator faces justice.
You will go a long way before you read a better depiction of that grinding reality than the one Trish Kearney provides here.
