Ger Doyle, who was last week convicted of indecent and sexual assault on under-age male swimmers, was appointed to manage the Olympic swimming squad for the Athens Games in 2004 even though a complaint of inappropriate behaviour had been made against him two years previously.

Swim Ireland, the sport’s governing body, was told by a third party in 2002 that Doyle, who was appointed national coach in 1996, intended to share a twin room with an 18-year-old male swimmer in the Novotel hotel in Sheffield for the British Youth Championships that August.

Despite a Swim Ireland rule explicitly prohibiting coaches from sharing bedrooms with swimmers, Doyle was permitted to go ahead with the arrangement. The parents of the swimmer in question had expressed the utmost faith in Doyle’s good character when contacted by a Swim Ireland official.

Doyle, 48, of Co Wexford, was found guilty in Wexford Circuit Criminal Court last Wednesday of 34 charges of indecent assault and one charge of sexual assault on five under-age male swimmers. The offences took place at a swimming pool in New Ross between January 1981 and December 1993.

Unknown to the jury of seven men and five women, he was acquitted 15 months ago on five separate charges of sexually abusing four under-age male swimmers. Only one of those swimmers was among the five complainants in the second trial.

After he was convicted Swim Ireland said there was “no hiding place” for the perpetrators of such offences.

Investigations into Doyle began in 2005 when a staff member at the Kennedy Memorial swimming pool in New Ross, where he was a club coach since 1982, reported him to Swim Ireland, gardai, and the town’s council, his then employers as pool manager.

She had become alarmed when Doyle showed her photographs of a hotel bedroom in Florida that he shared with a child swimmer during a training camp.

Doyle protested to the judge after the verdict on Wednesday: “I’m not accepting these charges”. Throughout the trial, Doyle denied the allegations and described himself as a dedicated coach.

He became the third national swim coach, and the fifth top-level coach in Irish swimming to be exposed as a child sex abuser. Following the 1998 Murphy report on child sex abusers in the upper echelons of swimming, Doyle underwent a child welfare course under the auspices of the Irish Sports Council and was granted a certificate in November 2004.

Now in custody awaiting sentencing by Judge Alice Doyle on January 28 next, Doyle pleaded not guilty in both his trials, which meant those he abused had to give embarrassing and graphic evidence. During four days of “in camera” evidence in the second trial, descriptions were given of how Doyle beat boys on their bare bottoms, blackmailed them, inveigled himself into their families and measured their penises with a tailor’s tape.

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