Rape victim tells former swimming coach Derry O’Rourke: ‘You took so much that was not yours to take’ (2024)

A woman who was raped and sexually assaulted as a teenager by former Irish international swimming coach Derry O’Rourke has told him: “You took so much that was not yours to take and nothing will ever give it back”.

The woman, now in her 40s, said the abuse “changed my world, my entire existence for the worst” and played a “huge” part in her choosing not to have children because she did not want to bring a child into the world to potentially suffer as she had.

In her victim impact statement to the Central Criminal Court, the woman said she felt unable to tell anyone for a long time after O’Rourke raped her a room in her school. She said he made her “create a mask for myself” that “kept me silent” and “moulded my life for years”.

She left her home city and later the country as a result of O’Rourke’s “abhorrent” abuse and still lives outside Ireland, which she said is “so sad because there is still so much beauty and kindness here”. She said O’Rourke “tainted all of that” when she was a vulnerable child and had “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.

Ms Justice Melanie Greally will sentence him 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.

During the trial, the woman said O’Rourke offered to be her swimming coach when she was in secondary school and she was “thrilled that someone had noticed her”. She was aged about 13 and “looked like a child”.

She trained almost daily and O’Rourke suggested that he carry out “muscle checks” to help her improve, involving him moving his hands up and down on her breasts. She had not told anyone because she thought it was “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 did not tell anyone about the rape but told her parents she was giving up swimming. She was “in a state of shock”, felt “awful” and “violated” and that “the trust had been broken”.

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 accepts the jury’s verdict, apologises to the victim for what happened and acknowledges her truthfulness and the impact of the offences on her.

Counsel said 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.

Reading her victim impact statement, the woman addressed O’Rourke, saying: “Isn’t it interesting how I could remember your name and you could not afford me the same dignity?”

She said she wanted him to know that he had “changed my world, my entire existence, it was for the worst”. She said it was “unacceptable” for him “to abuse and violate my child’s trust and my body too” and that with “complete and utter disregard” he deliberately used her for his “own personal gratification”.

She 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.

The woman said what O’Rourke did to her, and to others, was “inexcusable, yet it was your choice”.

“What did it take for you to be able to achieve all of this on so many levels, the disregard, the negligence, the continuous cruelty to me as a vulnerable child, your refusal to admit what you did?” she asked.

“I do not know what led you on the path to such violence,” she told him. “If you were abused, I am genuinely sorry for you. But, if you were, and it is a big but, you chose, unlike me, to perpetuate the horrific cycle, you just did not stop, you could have but you didn’t. That was your choice, I had no choice, you took so much that was not yours to take and nothing will ever give it back.”

O’Rourke 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 adverse Garda station since his release from prison in 2007, the court heard.

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