The Dutch Volleyball Association and Dutch Olympic organisers are standing by their decision to send a man convicted of rape to the Paris Olympics this summer to represent the Netherlands in beach volleyball.
In 2014, the man, Steven van de Velde, now 29, traveled to England, where he raped a 12-year-old girl he had met on Facebook. A British court sentenced him to four years in prison in 2016. After a year, he was transferred to the Netherlands, where his sentence was adjusted according to Dutch law. In total, van de Velde spent just over a year in prison.
He subsequently received professional counselling, the volleyball association said.
The Dutch Olympic Committee and the Dutch Volleyball Association have allowed Van de Velde to compete on the advice of experts who they say consider the likelihood of a reoffending to be very low, according to the association’s website. Van de Velde resumed her beach volleyball career in 2017.
While the international media covered their Olympic participation with a sense of outrage, the story did not gain much traction in the Netherlands. The Dutch media heavily reported on the international media and how they covered the case.
“Above all, there were reasons to relive the past of the 29-year-old beach volleyball player abroad,” the volleyball association wrote in a statement on its website.
Sara Alaoui, founder and director of the Safe Space Club, a nonprofit that works with victims of sexual abuse, said she was surprised by the lack of attention to this story compared to other, less consequential sports news. (For example, the Dutch media covered soccer player Memphis Depay wearing a headband During a recent match.)
Mr van de Velde admitted to the crime and told Dutch media it was the worst mistake of his life.
“It’s a big mistake, no one would deny that. I can’t do anything about it anymore,” van de Velde said in 2018 in an interview with Dutch broadcaster NOS. “I can’t reverse it, so I will have to bear the consequences.”
Alaoui said she was disappointed by what she called van de Velde’s lack of remorse and introspection. She sends the message that “if you’re a white Adonis, you have less to answer for,” she said.
“If you are really sorry and this is the biggest mistake of your life, then you have to show why you deserve a second chance,” Alaoui said. One way would have been to work with organizations that fight sexual abuse, he said.
“I don’t understand how we handle this in the post-MeToo Netherlands,” he said. “We’re talking about child abuse here.”
Olympic organizers were aware of Mr. van de Velde’s story and said in their statement that they had spent a lot of time talking to him.
“When van de Velde now looks in the mirror, he sees a mature and happy man, married and the father of a beautiful son,” the Dutch Volleyball Association, called Nevobo in Dutch, wrote on its website.
Michel Everaert, the volleyball association’s director general, said in a statement: “He is proving to be an exemplary professional and human being and there has been no reason to doubt him since his return.”
Mr van de Velde is not the first Olympian to have been convicted of a crime. The most notorious case is that of Tonya Harding, who qualified for the United States figure skating team at the 1994 Winter Olympics and was suspected of being involved in an attack on a rival, Nancy Kerrigan. Harding was allowed to compete, awkwardly on the same team as Kerrigan, and she came in eighth place. She later pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution and she was fined and sentenced to probation and community service.
Bruce Kimball was a silver medalist in diving in 1984 and hoped to return to the U.S. Olympic team in 1988. Two weeks before the Olympic trials, he drove drunk into a group of teenagers, killing two of them. Mothers Against Drunk Driving and friends of the victims opposed his participation in the trials, but he was allowed to compete. He finished fourth and sixth in his two trials, failed to make the team, and ultimately served four years in prison.
Victor Mather contributed reports