A Dutch beach volleyball player who raped a 12-year-old British girl has qualified for next month’s Paris Olympics despite a judge telling him his dream of representing the Netherlands “is shattered.”
Steven van de Velde was sentenced to four years in prison in March 2016 after he admitted three counts of raping a child he met on Facebook. In August 2014, at the age of 19, he travelled from the Netherlands to the UK to meet his victim. Wire informed of.
Judge Francis Sheridan told him: “Before you came to this country you were training as a potential Olympian. Your hopes of representing your country now lie in the shape of a shattered dream.”
However, Van de Velde, who was released after serving only 12 months in a Dutch prison, has since been allowed to resume his Olympic career. This month, he secured his place in the national pair for the Paris Games alongside Mathieu Immers.
At his sentencing at Aylesbury Crown Court after he was extradited from his home country, his defence lawyer Linda Strudwick commented on the verdict: “The headlines say it all: ‘A sex monster’. This is clearly the end of his career.”
It has proven otherwise, as Van de Velde, now 29, has successfully rebuilt her beach volleyball career to the extent that she and Immer are now ranked as the 11th team in the world heading to Paris next month.
Van de Velde’s resurgence poses a significant ethical dilemma for the International Olympic Committee. Every Paris Olympian is required to sign the Athlete’s Rights and Responsibilities Declaration, which includes a mandate to “act as a role model.”
Having travelled from Amsterdam to Milton Keynes to engage in sexual activity with a 12-year-old girl, a fact also strongly accepted by the judge in 2016, Van de Velde had communicated with the victim on social media before arranging the trip, during which he took her virginity in the absence of her mother.
“Your actions have ruined your life and if you had not come to England and committed these offences, you could have been at the top of your game,” Judge Sheridan said. “A young, naïve, foolish girl made the assumption that you loved her. In fact, you only knew her on the internet, had never met her before and were fully aware of the age difference.”
Upon his release in 2017 after serving just a quarter of his sentence, Van de Velde, who wept in court upon learning of the girl’s subsequent self-harm and overdose, said: “I want to correct all the rubbish that has been written about me while I was in prison. I didn’t read any of it deliberately but I understand it was quite serious, I was branded as a sex monster, a paedophile. I’m not like that, really not.”
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion about me, but it would be fair if they listen to me as well.”
The comments prompted a scathing response from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which said: “Van de Velde’s lack of remorse and self-compassion is astonishing, and we can only imagine how distressing the victim must have felt upon seeing his comments.
“The training may cause the child to feel shame or even guilt, because they think they have somehow participated voluntarily, when in fact an adult has sexually abused them.”
The Dutch Olympic Committee has not yet commented on Van de Velde’s qualification for Paris. According to The Australian, the country’s volleyball federation has not yet finalised its athlete selection. The IOC has been contacted for comment.
