When I was a little girl, I had a dream. That dream was to swim for Ireland at the Olympics. I believed I could do it, and my mam and dad truly believed in me too.

The Irish Olympic swimming coach Derry O’Rourke saw me swimming at the community games in 1980, when I was 10. After that he started calling my home to speak with Mam and Dad, asking me to join his swimming club, saying he was the best swimming coach in Ireland and that he would make my dream come true and get me to the Olympics. You can just imagine the pride Mam and Dad felt: here was the Irish Olympic coach ringing, wanting me to join his team of swimmers.

It must have been the same pride and excitement other swimmers and their families felt when they got the phone call from George Gibney – who was finally jailed this week for more than 15 years for the sexual abuse of four girls in the 1970s and 1980s – promising to make them a star.

Gibney’s reign of terror was in the Glenalbyn swimming pool in Stillorgan, Newpark Sports Centre in Blackrock, and at his home, where girls were babysitting his children.

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My circle of hell was the swimming club at the King’s Hospital in Palmerstown, where O’Rourke was treated like God, and later, in his car, in hotels, in the corridors of Newpark swimming pool and, once, while I was having my photograph taken after winning a competition.

The very first time that I swam in the pool, I knew my swimming would never be the same again. I remember realising right away that this was different; this is serious, no more fun. This was about hard training and winning, and nothing less was........

© The Irish Times