The Sunday Tribune has tracked down the former national and Olympics swimming coach to the state of Florida where, it is alleged, he held a young swimmer captive in a locked hotel room and raped her in July 1991.

While the woman continues to undergo intensive medical treatment in Dublin for the trauma she suffered, Gibney has been setting up home in a newly built condominium in Orange City, Florida, having secured a $150,000 Bank of America loan for its purchase.

It took San Francisco detective agency, Intercoastal Investigations, 24 hours to find Gibney for this newspaper. He has variously lived in Utah, Colorado and California after fleeing Ireland a decade ago. He first went to Scotland before leaving there in a hurry when it was reported that he was coaching juvenile swimmers at an Edinburgh club.

Gibney got off seven rape charges relating to young male and female swimmers on a legal technicality in 1994. The DPP directed that no prosecution should emanate from a second garda investigation prompted by fresh complaints made by four more swimmers in 1996. His extradition has never been sought by the state.

State boards The revelation that he was a member of two state boards at the time when complaints were being made against him will strengthen the suspicion long held by many of his victims that he had friends in high places who helped him elude justice.

According to a spokeswoman at the American embassy, the standard US visa application form specifically asks: "Have you ever been arrested or convicted for any offence or crime, even though subject of pardon, amnesty or other similar legal action?"

When the celebrity chef Conrad Gallagher was extradited from New York on charges of stealing paintings from a Dublin hotel (he was acquitted), a leading antiabuse campaigner in swimming wrote to justice minister Michael McDowell, demanding: "If you can extradite Conrad Gallagher for three paintings, why can't you extradite George Gibney for seven rapes?"

Gibney, who has visibly aged, goes by the name John, or Jon, Gibney in the gated "Enterprise Cove" development he moved to in January. It is situated in Orange City, population 7,000, and he is working at a nearby hotel in Lake Mary, Florida. His apartment is 100 yards from the community swimming pool. Outside his front door, he keeps a bronze sculpture of two children kissing.

He was getting into his car when the news photographer called out "George", and Gibney turned around in response.

However, when a reporter approached, he denied he was George Gibney and refused to answer questions. In his haste to escape the journalists, he drove his car, complete with rosary beads swinging from the rearview mirror, the wrong way on two one-way streets, ran a stop sign and cut across an unmarked police car.

His unsuspecting new neighbours described him as "the nicest, sweetest guy".

In Ireland, where many of his victims have surrendered hope of ever achieving justice, two lawsuits have been issued by victims of George Gibney against the Irish Amateur Swimming Association, now known as Swim Ireland.

The young woman who says he locked her in a Florida hotel room and raped her now intends requesting the Chief Inspector of the Garda Inspectorate, Kathleen O'Toole, to examine the entire file on George Gibney.

Additional reporting Aya Kawamoto