THE WOMAN is choosing bridesmaids' dresses for her summer wedding when she gets the call from a journalist. "Have you heard Derry O'Rourke is going to be released next week?" asks the caller. The woman says, no, she hadn't heard, and asks the journalist to call back later when it would be more convenient to talk. She presses the endcall button on her phone and, there in the bridal-wear shop, amid waves of happy-everafter white silks and satins, the tears slide freely down her face.

"I dread bumping into him. What if I see him if I'm in the queue in the bank? I'm devastated, " she says in the later phone call. "I asked the solicitor if I could get a safety order or something to stop him approaching me that smarmy way he does . . . 'O . . . . . . . . . . . . [addressing her by name], how nice to see you. How have you been?' . . . He said I could get an injunction, but that he [O'Rourke] would have to approach me first."

The woman, who was a child when her swimming coach, the former national and Olympic trainer Derry O'Rourke, repeatedly sexually abused her, lives in the same village where his wife and family have been residing in localauthority accommodation since he was jailed on 28 January 1999. The woman says her local garda station is seldom open. "I don't know how I'm going to cope with him being free, " she admits, in a voice so low she might be talking to herself.

Derry O'Rourke has accumulated more convictions for child sexual abuse than anybody in the Irish jurisdiction. He was convicted and jailed in 1999 for 12 years on 59 sample charges of assaulting and raping 12 girls. In 2001, he was convicted of child rape and was sentenced to seven years' jail. Two years ago, in 2005, he got another 10 years for a third set of convictions.

But, nine years since the first of his prison sentences totalling 29 years, he is due for release next Thursday, 1 March.

In the meantime, his victims have not received a cent in compensation for the pain and injury they suffered. Fifteen civil actions are pending against the Irish Amateur Swimming Association (the holding company of the sport's governing body, Swim Ireland), its Leinster branch, King's Hospital school, which housed the swimming club where much of the abuse occurred, and Derry O'Rourke, who is representing himself. Civil legal proceedings were initiated after his first set of convictions in January 1999, but they have still not been allocated a date for hearing in the High Court.

Part of the delay is caused by a separate legal action instituted by Swim Ireland, the sport's reconstituted governing body, against its insurer, Royal Sun Alliance, to establish its liability to indemnify Swim Ireland against the claims. The insurers are alleging that the Irish Amateur Swimming Association, as it was known before being renamed Swim Ireland, was criminally negligent in allowing the abuse to continue and, therefore, the insurance is null and void in a case where negligence, breach of duty and precarious liability are being argued. No application has been made in the High Court to have a date set for the hearing of this case.

When Swim Ireland, which is funded by the Sports Council, made a presentation to the Oireachtas committee on sport last November, its chief executive, Sarah Keane, was asked if potential High Court awards in the pending actions would be covered by the body's insurance policy or if the money would have to come from Swim Ireland's own resources. She said she was not in a position to reply because the case against the insurance company was ongoing.

"We've had to stay quiet for such a long time, " says another woman, now a wife and mother. "Please God, when the cases come back into court we can get it back into the limelight with the media. The sleeping giant is going to wake up soon. I mean people are going to have to face up to what we've gone through.

Basically, we were served lip service on a cold plate throughout the trial and the subsequent media interest, " adds the woman, who, during the original trial, valiantly withstood several attempts by the judge to halt her oral victimimpact statement.

"We had the naive trust that they would look out for us, but what we got was the Roderick Murphy Report. All it did was give a chronological record of events which was already out there. An awful lot of people in swimming who would have had valid things to say boycotted it.

To say they did something for us is only massaging their own egos and salving their own consciences. I don't think the government or the judiciary have taken this on board properly. This isn't somebody breaking into your house. This is somebody breaking into your body, the only sanctity you have as a person."

While O'Rourke was on bail before his trial, he secured work as the caretaker of a primary school in the midlands. After he was convicted of sexually assaulting and raping 12 children, he was released on bail for three weeks that Christmas before returning to court for sentencing. It is believed that he has not availed of counselling for paedophilia while in prison. In the nine years he has served, one of his victims has still not steeled herself to tell her father or her husband what was done to her.

"Jesus, nobody told me. I can't believe nobody rang to tell us, " says a third woman to get the call from a journalist breaking the news of O'Rourke's imminent freedom. "I would have expected somebody would tell us . . . the guards or the solicitor, somebody. There are so many questions we need answered. Will he be on the sex offenders' register? Will he have to sign on in a garda station every week? Where's he going to live?

"It's not fair. It's like yesterday he went in.

I was so young at the court case. I was physically sick, I still can't remember half of the things he did to me. I was only 10 years old.

It went on until I was 14. He's coming out and we haven't got as much as a penny or a 'sorry'.

I wish I could make myself speak out but I can't. I can't do it. I wish people knew that this is still going on for us. . ."

THE MOST VULNERABLE, LEFT IN THE CARE OF MONSTERS

IT IS thought unlikely that charges will be brought against a fourth senior swimming official investigated by gardai for crimes against children.

Complaints of sexual abuse by the coach were made by five boys two years ago. Gardai sent a file to the DPP last June, but no decision has yet emanated from his office. "Word is expected any day, " according to a source, but such delay is seen as a signal that no prosecution is likely.

A spokesman for Swim Ireland states that the coach in question is employed by a third party at a swimming pool it owns and not by the sport's governing body.

However, he is accredited as a coach by Swim Ireland and has acted in prominent voluntary roles at swimming galas around the country. He was stood down as a coach by Swim Ireland when gardai began investigating him.

Asked what will happen if the DPP decides against charges, the Swim Ireland spokesman said: "There would have to be an investigative process to assess his suitability to coach."

Three of the sport's most senior officials have been accused of sexually abusing children. Former national coach George Gibney fled to the US after failing in a High Court judicial review to have his prosecution stopped, but the state has never attempted to have him extradited for trial.

Derry O'Rouke was Gibney's successor as national coach and an associate of former Leinster branch president, Frank McCann, who was convicted of murdering his wife and child in a house fire in Rathfarnham. During the murder trial, it emerged that McCann had fathered a child with an underage swimmer.