Steven van de Velde will step right into a picturesque sand court docket close to the bottom of the Eiffel Tower on Sunday to satisfy his long-held ambition of changing into an Olympian.
And to let him signify the Netherlands on the Paris Video games, the Dutch Olympic Committee agreed that he ought to keep exterior the athletes’ village and never discuss with media, who will surely ask about his jail sentence for raping a 12-year-old woman when he was 19.
Van de Velde, 29, has been competing on the volleyball tour and in worldwide competitions for a number of years, but his choice to the Dutch Olympic workforce has prompted backlash and new consideration to his troubling previous.
The Dutch Olympic Committee and Dutch Volleyball Federation declined to make Van de Velde obtainable and to remark to The Athletic past an announcement that stated partially that Van de Velde was included on the workforce “after cautious consideration” and that he had “constantly met” their excessive requirements. Van de Velde, approached as he arrived in Paris this week by a reporter from the Each day Mail, declined remark past the statements from the federation and committee.
Van de Velde was sentenced to 4 years in jail in 2016 after admitting that he had taken an affordable flight from Amsterdam to a small airport north of London in 2014 and had intercourse with a 12-year-old woman after that they had talked on-line often for a number of months.
He was caught after he suggested his sufferer to get a morning-after capsule. Employees at a household planning clinic alerted the woman’s household and the police due to her age.
(Pablo Morano/BSR Company/Getty Photographs)
Van de Velde served 13 months in jail, together with 12 months in Britain earlier than he was transferred to the Netherlands below a treaty between the international locations. He was resentenced to a shorter time period below Dutch regulation and was launched in early 2017.
After popping out of jail, he gave an interview to Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad through which he stated: “I’ve been branded as a intercourse monster, as a paedophile. That I’m not — actually not.”
Van de Velde’s identify continues to be on the UK’s intercourse offenders registry. Aylesbury Crown Court docket heard how he began speaking to the woman on social media — on Skype, Fb and Snapchat — and spoke to her virtually on daily basis over just a few months.
Their communication began when she despatched him a pal request. He initially thought she was 16 however even when she advised him her actual age, he didn’t break off contact.
On August 2, 2014, he boarded a flight to satisfy his sufferer in individual. From Luton airport, he took a taxi 22 miles (35km) to Milton Keynes, the city the place she lived, for his or her sexual encounters, together with one occasion of vaginal intercourse throughout which she complained he was hurting her. In addition they drank Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur collectively and slept on a cardboard field below a lodge stairway once they couldn’t get a room.
Earlier than he returned to the Netherlands, Van de Velde suggested his sufferer to get the morning-after capsule as a result of that they had not used contraception.
Again in his dwelling nation, Van de Velde’s sporting profession was taking off.
He had simply received a nationwide championship in 2015 and seemed set to make the Dutch workforce for the next summer time’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Then a European warrant was issued for his arrest on baby intercourse expenses.
He was extradited to the UK on January 8, 2016, the place he pleaded responsible to a few counts of raping a toddler.
In court docket, his lawyer Linda Strudwick argued that Van de Velde was not a “predatory younger man” and that flying to the UK to satisfy the woman had been a “spur-of-the-moment choice”. She claimed his actions weren’t grooming and that he didn’t make the journey “for the aim of getting intercourse”.
She stated: “There was mutual help as two angst-ridden juveniles. He’s misplaced a stellar sporting profession and he’s being branded a rapist. In Holland, the time period means violent sexual assault with out consent. The headlines say all of it — ‘a intercourse monster.’ It’s plainly a profession finish for him.”
When Van de Velde was sentenced, it was revealed in court docket that the sufferer felt racked with guilt following his arrest and had been self-harming. Decide Francis Sheridan advised Van de Velde: “The emotional hurt that has been brought about to this baby is gigantic. As she matures, she must come to understand that you’re not the great man she thought you have been and hoped you could be.”
Beneath UK regulation, victims of sexual offences are granted lifelong anonymity, each throughout the authorized course of and past.
These Olympics would be the peak of Van de Velde’s profession (Buda Mendes/Getty Photographs)
The sentence was decreased within the Netherlands as a result of its regulation regarding intercourse with minors is much less strict than the regulation in England.
In a TV interview one yr after his launch, Van de Velde attributed his crime to being a teen and “nonetheless figuring issues out”.
“I made that selection in my life after I wasn’t prepared,” he advised NOS. “I used to be kind of misplaced and now I’ve a lot extra life expertise.”
He added: “Everybody needs to be appreciated, everybody needs to be revered, and with one thing like this in your document, it’s tough. I can’t reverse it, so I’ve to hold the results. It’s the most important mistake of my life.”
Since then, he has rebuilt his life and sporting profession. He has competed for his nation on the worldwide stage since 2017, and in 2022 he married Kim van de Velde, a German seashore volleyball participant who has additionally skilled as a police officer. They’ve a two-year-old son.
Marking a profession excessive, Van de Velde will seem on the Paris Olympics alongside his enjoying accomplice Matthew Immers, 23, and the pair will hope to construct on their latest success the place they have been runners-up at a match on seashore volleyball’s world tour in Could. Van de Velde has additionally competed at a number of world and European championships.
Their first group-stage match in Paris is in opposition to an Italian duo on Sunday morning.
“I do know the Steven of immediately and I’m pleased about that,” Immers stated. “I really feel snug with him, we take excellent care of one another. I’m 23, he’s 29. He’s a sort of a second father to me, who helps me.”
In its assertion, the Dutch Olympic Committee stated Van de Velde deserved a second likelihood as he had proven that he’d “grown and positively modified his life”.
The assertion stated: “We’re deeply conscious that the renewed publicity about Steven van de Velde is inflicting a whole lot of emotion, which we absolutely perceive, because the occasions at the moment have been very critical. Loads has occurred since then. Steven served his sentence and has accomplished an intensive rehabilitation programme with specialised professionals, together with the probation service. Consultants have concluded there isn’t any danger of recidivism.”
“He’s proving to be an exemplary skilled and human being and there was no cause to doubt him since his return,” stated Michel Everaert, normal director of the Dutch Volleyball Federation.
The volleyball federation added that “when Van de Velde appears within the mirror now, he sees a mature and pleased man, married and father of a stupendous son.”
Pieter van den Hoogenband, chef de mission for Dutch Olympic Committee, stated the strikes to vary his lodging and prohibit him from the media have been obligatory as a result of consideration on Van de Velde had magnified across the Paris Video games.
“He’s not going to downplay it. We’ve to respect that and assist him as a member of the workforce to have the ability to carry out,” Van den Hoogenband stated.
The IOC doesn’t have its personal guidelines for the choice of particular person individuals for video games, deferring to every nationwide olympic committee to make its personal choices.
“They (the Dutch Olympic Committee) have put out an announcement, they’ve made it very clear there’s a whole lot of safeguarding happening, particular further safeguarding,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams advised a information convention in Paris on Saturday.
Some nationwide Olympic officers have made it clear they might not have chosen an athlete to play below related circumstances.
“If an athlete or a workers member had that conviction, they wouldn’t be allowed to be a member of our workforce,” stated Australia’s chef de mission, Anna Meares.
Van de Velde’s look on the Video games has prompted fury from marketing campaign teams who stated he’d proven a “chilling” lack of regret and empathy for his sufferer. A petition with almost 81,000 signatures known as on the IOC to ban identified intercourse offenders from competing.
The Survivors Belief, a UK-based group which helps victims of sexual violence, stated in an announcement that his inclusion was a “additional endorsement of the surprising toleration we now have of kid sexual abuse.” It added: “The rape of a kid was deliberate, calculated involving worldwide journey, and can undoubtedly trigger his sufferer lifelong trauma, irreversibly altering the course of her life. As a society, we now have to begin embracing a zero-tolerance strategy to this heinous and expensive crime.”
“An athlete convicted of kid sexual abuse, regardless of in what nation, shouldn’t be awarded the chance to compete within the Olympic Video games,” added Julie Ann Rivers-Cochran, government director of The Military of Survivors. “Regardless of Van de Velde’s justifications, there isn’t any excuse for raping a toddler. Van de Velde’s assertion reveals a scarcity of regret and understanding of the results of his actions. Raping a minor isn’t a ‘misstep’ — it’s a legal violation that ought to exclude folks from participation within the Olympic Video games.”
When Van de Velde was sentenced in 2016, Decide Sheridan advised him: “Your hopes of representing your nation now lie as a shattered dream. Your actions in these two days in England have wrecked your life and you may, had you by no means come to England and dedicated these offences, have been a frontrunner in your sport.”
But, eight years on, Van de Velde’s goals are removed from shattered.
(Prime photograph: Lucio Tavora/Xinhua through Getty Photographs)