This is how it ended for George Gibney: a packed court celebrating his demise

T his is how it ended for George Gibney: a packed court, giddy with tangled knots of happy people, all hugging and sobbing and congratulating each other on his demise. Within those knots were the victims, their families, their friends, the journalists who exposed him and the gardaí who investigated him – all united in joy and relief at the road’s end. In another part of that courtroom was Gibney, the 78-year-old paedophile in grey, rolled-up tracksuit bottoms, carted off to prison in a wheelchair to spend the next 15½ years.