Ms Justice Melanie Greally sentenced O’Rourke at the Central Criminal Court 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.
Ms Justice Greally told O’Rourke the admission of his wrongdoing and his apology “rings hollow”.
He had approached his victim as he supervised an open swim and told her she “had potential” and offered to coach her. He had “groomed” the girl, who was vulnerable at the time and negotiating a very difficult time in her life, telling her to train alone in the swim lane closest to the changing rooms.
The first sign of the abuse to come was O’Rourke watching the girl in the shower and this progressed to raping her, telling her she was a “good girl” but to “be quiet” and not tell anyone. From the day she was raped, the girl stopped swimming.
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Passing sentence, Ms Justice Greally said the victim “went into decline socially and academically” from the time of the abuse. However, she had faced O’Rourke with “immense courage and dignity” on Tuesday when she challenged him during her victim impact statement to the court.
Ms Justice Greally said while O’Rourke had a series of medical conditions and was taking “copious amounts” of medication, no one condition required very close or urgent medical management.
He was a man with “a large number of convictions for similar offences” and – given his age and isolation from his family – was “unlikely to receive any visits in prison”.
The aggravating factors in the case included O’Rourke’s history, the number of times he abused his victim and the duration and persistence of those attacks. He had “groomed” the girl in a “premeditated” way “exposing his child victim to the risk of pregnancy”. It was clear O’Rourke had been a serial child abuser of a period of 13 years.
Ms Justice Greally jailed O’Rourke for 10 years for rape and for 40 months on each, but two, of the indecent assault charges. On the remaining two indecent assault charges she sentenced him to five years for each. All of the sentences will run concurrently, meaning his headline sentence is one of 10 years, of which O’Rourke will serve at least seven years after remission is factored in.
The sentencing took place just 24 hours after O’Rourke’s victim addressed him directly in her victim impact statement to the court, telling him: “You took so much that was not yours to take and nothing will ever give it back”.
Now in her 40s, the woman said the abuse “changed my world, my entire existence for the worst”. Her experiences at the hands of O’Rourke had played a “huge” part in her choosing not to have children. She did not want any child of hers to suffer the way she had.
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