Orange City residents see Gibney as significant threat to local children

GEORGE GIBNEY: PAEDOPHILE SWIMMING COACH LIVING IN FLORIDA:LAST JANUARY and February, the residents of Enterprise Cove, the Orange City neighbourhood in Florida, where former Irish Olympic swimming coach George Gibney now lives, received a flyer about the 1994 Irish court case against Gibney and allegations of serious child abuse made against him by former swimmers.

Since then, a neighbourhood watch – organised and guided by the local police – now starts and ends its patrol outside Gibney’s apartment, which he bought in January 2007 for $157,000. He is the original owner of the building and has a 95 per cent mortgage with Bank of America for $150,253 over a 40-year term.

Recently his silver Honda car was “egged”, an incident that he reported to the police. He has since begun to park in another area and has been disappearing from his home for days at a time.

The residents in that part of Orange City are angered by Gibney’s background and see him as a significant threat to children in their neighbourhood.

Through the One Child International organisation, a registered charity that has no affiliations with religious, political or cultural groups, it has also been established that Gibney, who is calling himself “Jon”, is closely associated with the local church as well as a Catholic organisation, the Knights of Columbus.

Photographs of him taking part in an official function of the knights appeared in one of their newsletters in July 2009.

Until recently, Gibney worked in a Marriott Hotel in Lake Mary, Florida, but was fired on March 2nd. Locals are unsure whether he has been working since and he is said to avoid discussions with residents in his apartment block, telling them he is involved with his church.

According to a neighbour, Gibney is absent from his apartment most weekends. Until 2007, Gibney lived in Colorado and worked for the Coors brewing company. He told his employers that he was active in the church in Wheat Ridge County and during his time there requested two weeks’ holidays, to travel with a priest on a mission to Peru to treat children’s eyes. He said he was an eye care mission chairman and was also involved locally in working with juvenile offenders.

“Of concern to us is that Gibney is a serial child molester and rapist and has been living in the US for over 10 years,” said One Child International president Evin Daly. “Given the compulsiveness of people like Gibney, he must have offended again. People like Gibney are an increasing and continual threat to children. No complaints have been recorded in the US. His trip to Peru, while in Colorado, is of interest given its [Peru] reputation as a child sex tourist destination. The Knights of Columbus work with handicapped children and migrants.”

Gibney was the Irish national coach from 1984 to 1991 and was charged with 17 counts of sexual abuse. A judicial review in 1994 prevented the case from proceeding due to the length of time elapsed since the alleged incidents . He then left Ireland.

Daly is particularly interested in the allegations made about Gibney after the judicial review and believes that there are serious charges for which he has not answered and also that he was untruthful to US immigration.

“He has obviously lied on his application for his green card,” said Daly. “Had he told the truth he would never have gotten a green card to work in the US.

“When you get a green card, you have to swear that the information you are giving is true otherwise you are perjuring yourself. Either Gibney lied on the application for his card or he lied on the oath. ”

Gibney’s case has been one of the festering issues within Irish swimming. Two colleagues of his in swimming Ger Doyle and Derry O’Rourke were jailed for child abuse. O’Rourke has been released after serving nine years of a concurrent 29-year sentence. Doyle was sentenced at Wexford Circuit Criminal Court last month to 6½ years for 35 charges of child abuse involving boys.