SHE tapped out the number the garda had left on her voicemail recorder. "You left a message for me to call you, " she said, introducing herself when he answered.

"Yes, we've pulled a middle-aged woman out of the canal and your phone number is on the body, " said the garda.

"What colour is her hair?"

"Light brown. It looks as if she'd just got it done."

("I knew in my heart then. Mam had got her hair done on Saturday." This was Monday. ) "Is there a red car?" she asked. ("Mam had a red Toyota Carina.") "No. . ."

("O, thank God.") ". . . but there has been one seen in the area."

HER FATHER and one of her brothers went to the canal to identify the body. Her mother was wrapped in a body bag. Her skin was still warm, despite having been in the water. She must not have been long dead when a passerby had spotted her from the bridge overhead and raised the alarm.

Four days before taking her life, she had told her only daughter that she loved her and apologised for ruining her life. She said she could not forgive herself for failing to look after her.

"He killed her, " she states with unshakeable conviction. "I can't even think of my mam's death without him being there. He's always there. He might as well have stood behind her and pushed her into the canal. It never goes away. It's what I am as a person now.

Everything that has happened in my life is a result of what he did to me. Mam is dead. It's ironic. All my parents ever wanted was for us to be able to swim, and Mam drowned."

DERRY O'ROURKE walked patronisingly into her family's happy-go-lucky life when she was aged "10-and-a-half". He was back from the Moscow Olympics where he had managed the Irish swimming team, a universally respected figure in Irish sport. At the national swimming championships that year, he approached her parents after seeing her swim and offered to take her on as one of his proteg�es. They were proud of their firstborn child and only daughter, head-hunted by the sport's supremo, and signed her up for membership of the prestigious King's Hospital swimming club in west Dublin, where the daily communicant and father-of-six coached.

"I don't remember the first time [she was sexually abused]. I don't remember a time when it wasn't happening. Can you understand that?" she asks. "It wasn't only about touching you. It was the way he looked at you.

During competitions, you would hear his voice above all the other voices. It was fear. The girls' changing rooms in the club were at the far end of the pool. He would be sitting at the top. You had to walk the whole bank in your togs to get to your lane. He would look at you the whole time."

She does not wish to discuss the abuse in detail. Suffice to say that, in three separate sets of criminal prosecutions pertaining to 18 girls, Derry O'Rourke pleaded guilty to dozens of charges of sexual assault and rape. There was evidence that he groomed his victims, abused them in a locked room beside the pool and in his car, made them swim and parade naked for him, used hypnosis on them, pretended he was measuring their body fat while he was abusing them, and ordered them to take the contraceptive pill. Most of his victims had not reached puberty when he started attacking them.

"I wouldn't be there in my head when it was happening, " she says. "You had to go away, to shut it off. I loved swimming. I wanted to swim but I didn't want to be there. I was suffering from depression while I was swimming, as a young child. I can see that now.

"At that time it was expensive to be a member of King's Hospital. My brothers all played rugby but their sport was put to one side for my swimming. At weekends, there were medals coming home, there were trophies coming home. There were trips abroad for competitions. I remember one trip to Germany, he didn't tell me until shortly before it that I had been picked to go. He did things like that to have control over you. He told my dad I was going on the trip and Dad was thrilled but he said: 'You don't have to come. I'll take good care of her.'

"Dad used to get up at 5.10 every morning to drive me to the pool. He'd sleep in the car in a sleeping bag with a hot water bottle Mam made for him. Sleet, snow, whatever. Mam would have breakfast ready when we got home and Dad would drive me to school. Then Mam would collect me at 4.30 and drive me to the pool and I'd be there until 6pm. My dream was to swim for Ireland."

The silverware of that roseate early life is not on display in the kitchen of the house where she grew up and which she now shares with her father. She still has the shoulders of a swimmer, strongly defined as she reaches for a cigarette. The butterfly was her best stroke;

the one that lifts the swimmer like a dolphin out of the water in a surging cascade. It could have carried her to exhilarating feats. Instead, in the week that her attacker is being released from jail, she is smoking and weeping, an hour home from one of her regular appointments at St John of God's psychiatric hospital.

"My new year's resolutions every year are:

one, I'm not going back into hospital and, two, I'm not going to kill myself this year, " she says.

"I have now achieved my first year."

SHE KNEW that what Derry O'Rourke was doing to her was "wrong" and so, whenever he approached, her mind took flight. At 17, she packed her bags and left the country. "I kept moving - to other jobs, to other countries." She purged everything that had happened since she was "10-and-a-half" from her memory and became a hateful person.

"I have only made one good friend in all the years since I was 17. I never had a real relationship, like other girls did. I'd be drunk. I wasn't comfortable with people. If a male put a hand on my shoulder, I would jump. I was physically sick. I was a horrible person. I was angry. I dug myself deep into my work. My life was work, sleep, eat, drink. Alcohol became my best friend. I used to go to bed at night and say, 'God, what did I do so bad that made me like this?' Trying to live with myself was horrible.

"I was the regional manager of a big food company with 200 people working for me. I was working a hundred hours a week. I had a four-bedroom house and I was paying the mortgage on my own. I knew when I got home at night, when I drove up my drive and flicked my car alarm, I knew I had to be me and I couldn't be me.

"I was away for 10 years. I was in London [in 1996] when I got a phone call one night from someone at home saying he'd been arrested and wondering what it might be about. I said I didn't know but I remember thinking when I put the phone down: 'I know what it's about.' It started to grow inside me but I kept pushing it down.

"I came home for a break and I was drunk and I said something - it must have been in the papers around then. The next morning, Mam asked me about it but I wouldn't say anything. That morning, I got on a plane and said I'm never going back there."

"Mam was starting to put two and two together. She used to go to mass every morning and she would see him and his wife in the front pew. She and Dad told me: 'No matter what happens in your life you can always come home.'" On 29 January 1998, the day after Derry O'Rourke was first convicted of sexually abusing children and jailed for 12 years, she was home and listening to the radio when she thought she recognised the voice of one of her old swimming pals. The woman was talking about O'Rourke and the frequent assaults he had perpetrated on her as a child. When Pat Kenny, who was interviewing the woman, inadvertently addressed her by her first name, there could be no more denial; no more running away.

"I picked up the phone and rang a girl and said: 'O my God, it's true. I'm one of them.'

After that, my skin erupted in lumps. They came out all over my head and my body. I had pains, aches, headaches, exhaustion. I couldn't sleep. I was all over the place.

"When I went to see the guards and they took my statement they said they'd have to go to see him in the Curragh Prison. I panicked. I said: 'Are you going to tell him I told you?' It took them another 30 or 40 minutes to calm me down."

Her complaint and those of five other former swimmers came to court in July 2000.

O'Rourke pleaded guilty to all charges.

"Even in court, even with him in handcuffs, my brother had to hold me. I went downstairs to the toilets and I couldn't come out. I was too scared. I'd never been in a courtroom in my life. I'd never spoken to a guard. I walked out of court that day and I'm sure the file went into a cabinet and a key was turned in it. I left with one of the other girls and we were like two children. I was that little girl who used to go swimming: frightened.

"That was in July. In November I took an overdose and threw myself down the stairs. I had a total breakdown. The times I've done it [attempted suicide], I wanted death. I didn't want to be talking to anybody the next day. I didn't thank anybody for helping me. I hated my family for saving me.

"When I came home from hospital, Mam was at the door. She put her arms around me.

I said: 'Mam, I'm going to be okay.' She said:

'K---, all I want is for you to be okay.'" Six months later, her mother was dead at the age of 58.

"I was back in hospital in June 2001 [after her mother's suicide]. They let me out in September and I ended up in casualty in London.

I'd taken an overdose. In February 2002, I ended up in the secure unit, the lock-up unit in John of God's in Dublin. The light bulb over the bed was removed. They took away my deodorant and the belt of my pyjamas. There were no chairs, no locks in the doors. The picture I had of Mam, they took the glass out of the frame. I had my cigarettes but I had no lighter. I asked Dad to bring in a lighter but they must have checked him before he came in and they confiscated it. I was mad. I'd wanted the lighter to set my dressing gown on fire.

"Jim McDaid [as minister for sport] was in charge of swimming when all this was going on and he said [in May 2002] that people who committed suicide were selfish. He doesn't realise how much he hurt people. I know what it's like to want to do it. It's the only way to get some freedom and peace. My mam was the most fantastic, wonderful mother. She was a brilliant lady. She was the most kind-hearted person you could meet. She wasn't selfish.

THE FINANCIAL COST of her recovery has been enormous. One hospital bill alone came to Euro55,000. She continues to have regular out-patient appointments at the hospital and weekly sessions with a counsellor. She had to discontinue her VHI policy as she no longer works. Her legal case for damages is one of 15 initiated since O'Rourke was jailed in 1998 that has still not come to court. Her father is paying her medical bills.

"God rest my mam, she used to say: 'K---, I hope you get looked after.' I've nothing now.

I've lost my career. I've lost my home. I've lost everything. My mam and dad earned hard money to pay my fees to the Irish Amateur Swimming Association [now Swim Ireland].

They were meant to look after me. They employed Derry O'Rourke, George Gibney and Frank McCann. They haven't done anything to help us. None of them has ever contacted me to this day. Nobody has said sorry.

"My heart goes out to the boys and girls George Gibney attacked. Why is that man living free in America? How did he get into America? He had to have help from somebody.

At least we got something. Derry O'Rourke went to jail.

"I discussed his release with my doctor in John of God's today and how I'm going to cope.

I'm worried about it. It's going to be hard living with that when all the fuss has quietened down and everyone's forgotten about it.

"What Derry O'Rourke did to me has affected everyone. My brothers have lost their mam. My dad has lost his wife and partner. My brothers found me on the floor and had to watch me being brought into John of God. My mam only got to see one of her six grand-children.

"He's been in prison for nine years. I'd have swapped with him. I'd have done his nine years and I would have been an awful lot happier than in the prison I've been in."