A former Irish swim coach who was charged with child sexual exploitation and sentenced to three years in prison will walk free on Thursday.
Matthew Coward, 35, was given a three-year sentence in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in November 2023 after pleading guilty to three counts of sexual exploitation of three girls and three counts of production of child pornography between September 2021 and February 2022. He was initially arrested and charged with sexual exploitation and producing child abuse materials in May 2022.
On Thursday, Coward will be freed from Dublin’s Arbour Hill Prison, according to the Irish Mirror. He was sentenced to a total of four years in custody, with the final 12 months suspended.
A source told the Irish Mirror that Coward almost broke his hand after hitting a wall when he learned that his case was back in the press.
“He is due for release from prison tomorrow morning, and he probably hoped that he would be able to get out and integrate back into society without anyone noticing,” the source said, according to the Irish Mirror. The source added that Coward is not expected to return to the area where he previously lived.
“He will be placed on the sex offenders register, and measures are no doubt being put in place for his integration back into society,” the source said.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that one of the three girls broke down in her father’s car on the way home from swim practice, telling him she thought she had been recorded while changing into her suit.
Coward, who previously served on staff at the Swim Ireland National Training Center in Dublin, was found to have secretly recorded girls changing in his poolside office over a one-year period. An investigation found that he would give the girls tech suits and encourage them to try them on in his office.
An investigation into Coward began after one swimmer told her father that Coward gave her a pair of suits or “swimming skins” to try on in his office and told her she would need to get “completely naked” in order to try them on.
She noticed a phone propped up in Coward’s office and wondered if she had been recorded, also noting that the suit could take up to 20 minutes to put on. She added that a number of different girls had tried on the suits in his office in recent weeks.
The girl’s father then contacted Swim Ireland, which followed up with Irish Police (Garda) and the Child and Family Agency (Tusla), and Coward was told to stand down as coach shortly thereafter.
Coward was named to the Irish National Training Center staff in 2018-19, and had been tabbed to lead a new Swim Ireland program called “Project 28” in November 2021 shortly before he was arrested.
