O'Rourke hypnotised swimmers in office before abusing them

The "second-named coach" referred to in the report is not identified but from the details given he is clearly Derry O'Rourke, the one-time national coach who was jailed for 12 years in January after pleading guilty to sex abuse charges.

Among the evidence given to Dr Murphy was that while employed as coach at a club associated with a prominent school, he hypnotised swimmers in his office before abusing them sexually.

One witness said that while she was a 12-year-old boarder at the school in the late 1970s, she was invited to his office and told she would swim better if relaxed. On the first occasion he hypnotised her, asking her to concentrate on her breathing and she remembered nothing more.

On later occasions, however, the witness was hypnotised and "asked her to imagine a body touching her".

"He touched her, explaining that it was to heighten her experience. He had intercourse with her. This pattern continued. The door would always be locked."

The report continues: "The second-named coach also had intercourse with her in his car at the back of the club sports house and on other occasions in an adjoining park and in his clubhouse on a weekend or half-day. The abuse ended in July 1979. She was then 13."

A second witness said that in 1992, when she was 13, the same coach encouraged her to undergo "relaxation treatment". She was called to his office and hypnotised "twice or three times a week over a period of weeks".

The witness told Dr Murphy that the coach had shown her how to use tampons, admitted to her that he was "very manipulative" and asked her for oral sex. When she began going out with a boyfriend, however, "the coach stopped touching her inappropriately". She did not complain and did not tell her mother until May 1996, when she was 17.

A third witness spoke of what she regarded as "a few small incidents" in 1992 when she joined the club at the age of 16. "The coach requested each of the female swimmers to come into a small room to be measured. She [the witness] went in the view of the other swimmers. The coach put his hand on her chest. She hit him. He fell. Everyone in the pool laughed."

When she explained to others why she had hit him, "she was told by some of the swimmers not to say anything, that it was probably a mistake and that she should not get the coach into trouble".

The same witness said O'Rourke once requested her and two younger girls to take down the tops of their swimsuits for a "fat calibre test". One of the younger girls, aged 13, started to do so but the witness refused and the younger girl then stopped. Other swimmers laughed it off as a joke, but the witness said that afterwards "testing took place in the coach's office".

This witness also complained of the coach's habit of walking through the girls' changing room. He would come through the shower area and then knock on the dressing-room door asking to come in. The younger girls looked to the witness to respond but the coach came in "many times".

The witness's experience with the coach came to a head when O'Rourke asked her younger sister to see him in his office and she (the witness) accompanied her. "This annoyed the coach who told her that [she] was wasting her and everyone else's time in swimming as she was not good enough. She was sick of the problems in swimming in 1993/94. She knew many of the girls who had complained. She left the club."

The report refers to a formal complaint made to the club in November 1992, by a 17-year-old who alleged O'Rourke cupped her breasts while supposedly measuring her pectoral muscles.

Asked to explain himself, the coach said the swimmer was "a well developed girl, that it was difficult to locate the base of her pectoral muscle and that he used the inside of her tight swim suit to locate same".

He believed the complaint had arisen because of a "silly comment" he made to the girl some days after the incident.

The club committee "accepted the coach's version that the incident resulted from a misunderstanding", according to the report. It wrote to the girl's family thanking them for drawing attention to the incident and agreeing they had behaved correctly. But in a separate letter, the committee also thanked the coach for his co-operation and assured him it believed he too had behaved correctly.

The letter to him continued: "This . . . committee in no way wished to place you in any form of strait-jacket or to modify that natural exuberance of swimming and coaching leadership which communicates so well to our young swimmers . . . But we do urge greater caution that you do not place yourself or allow yourself to be placed in any situation which might be misinterpreted or misconstrued by others."

The report notes that, in his evidence to the inquiry, the president of the committee said "he believed and still believes that the complaint lacked substance".

The report also notes that a further complaint was made about the "second-named coach". But because this is the subject of Garda inquiries, it had been decided not to report details so as to avoid prejudice to any criminal proceedings.