"It was a well-known fact"

Nicola Gallagher, ex-wife of Derry senior football manager, Rory Gallagher said the GAA knew about the domestic abuse claims but did nothing. Rory stepped down as the football coach on Friday after a social media post from his estranged wife, Nicola, claimed he was abusive towards her for over 24 years. The news came just two days before Derry took on Armagh in the Ulster senior football final. In her post, Nicola claimed that her ex-husband seriously abused her when they were married and said he allegedly pushed her down the stairs while she was pregnant. Now, Nicola said that her father wrote the GAA an email disclosing the abuse but the organisation never wrote back. In a recent interview with the Sunday Independent, Nicola said she was 100% sure that the GAA knew about the abuse claims. She said: "There were senior members of the GAA who knew what was going on, there are incidents that took place at GAA events. "It was a well-known fact." In the interview, Nicola explained that she didn't upload the social media post out of revenge for her ex-husband but said she thought long and hard about it. She said she had to consider her children and was really afraid but in the end, hit the post button. The post has now over 19,000 likes and hundreds of comments of people sending Nicola and her family supportive messages. Nicola said: "The first person to ring me was my aunt who said, ‘I am so proud of you, you did the right thing. We have been waiting for that for years'". The mother-of-three said she is humbled by the number of kind messages and comments she's receiving and said although she is not one for liking attention, she felt she needed to post it.

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