Karen Leach has a story which needs to be heard.
As a young swimmer, her dream was to represent Ireland at the Olympic games. Between the ages of 10 and 17, she spent most of her time in a pool, learning and perfecting her craft, in the belief she would one day compete at the highest level.
The national swim coach was Derry O'Rourke and he was the man who would decide her participation at the Games. Leach explained what her life was like before meeting him.
"My life before I met Derry O'Rourke and went to the King's Hospital swimming club, I would have had a happy childhood, I had a loving home, would have went to school - three brothers, mam and dad - happy out the door and not anything as such to say that was wrong," she told Nathan Murphy.
"I was a little girl with dreams and my dream was to swim for Ireland at the Olympics and that's all I wished for as a little girl.
"I had seen the Olympics comes on every four years and I'd watch it at home with mam and dad and my three brothers, and, I'd see them coming out under the Irish flag and thought 'ahh, I want to do that one day'.
"So, the only reason that mam and dad brought myself and my three brothers swimming was to learn how to swim - neither mam nor dad could swim. And, I would remember them speaking at times saying they remember being at places and the others would go in swimming and they couldn't and they didn't want us, as their children, to feel that.
"So, it started out really of learning how to swim. Mam and dad would have taken us to the Navan road to swim in a club called Sea Spray, and, I have to say I loved it.
"I loved it from the moment I dived into the swimming pool and I started learning how to swim.
"It was fun, it was joy, it was wonderful - which the sport swimming is."
As she progressed steadily, she found herself at the Community Games under the watchful eye of Derry O'Rourke, the national swim coach. Shortly after the games, O'Rourke contacted Leach's father and requested that she join his swimming club at King's Hospital.
The lure of working with such a high profile figure in the sport she loved was too hard to turn down and shortly afterwards, she joined O'Rourke's swim club.
Asked about how quickly the abuse started, she said: "I don't remember a time the it was never there. I can't actually say 'when' but I don't remember now.
"I remember the very first time that I swam in that pool, in his swimming club and I was in lane one and I went to the junior session that evening. I only swam once in the juniors.
"And, I remember seeing the session was written up on the board and there was coaches walking up and down and you just dived in and you swam and you did not stop.
"And I remember even you go down by the rope but you one up by the wall and when I was breathing I could see all the coaches and I thought, 'god, this is different - this isn't fun and laughing and what I've experienced.' Now this was about hard training, this was about winning and that was it, nothing else was acceptable and after that I was straight into the seniors."
Leach detailed the total control O'Rourke had on the club and how he didn't want parents present during training sessions and went on to tell of an occasion where she qualified for a competition in England only for O'Rourke to tell her father there was no need for him to go along as well because he "would take good care of her."
Leach went on to describe the torment she endured and the struggle she had acknowledging what was going on. "As a little girl, it's not that straight forward - it's not that simple. I knew I didn't like it but I loved my swimming. I wanted to swim for Ireland at the Olympics and, in order to do that, I had to train hard, I had to do what he told me to do - everything. You have to remember - he's the Irish Olympic coach - he knows everything.
"He knew exactly what he was doing to me the very first time he saw me. I vaguely remember at the Community Games him actually calling me and speaking to me. So, I can't remember the full conversation but he did speak to me that time at that competition so he knew - he knew exactly what he could do to me the first time he saw me.
"I had a dream and he knew he could do what he wanted to do by using my dream - blackmailing me and blackmailing my mam and dad."
The full interview is available here:
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