Steven van de Velde will signify the Netherlands in the Olympics subsequent month, eight years after being convicted of raping a 12-year-old.
In 2014 and fewer than every week earlier than his nineteenth birthday, Van de Velde flew to England to satisfy the sufferer, the place he raped her after giving her alcohol. He first met the sufferer on Fb.
He was sentenced to 4 years in jail two years later however was launched after only one yr. He’s a registered intercourse offender within the U.Ok. for the remainder of his life, and the sufferer has since self-harmed and as soon as overdosed.
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Steven van de Velde saves the ball through the males’s closing match between Evandro Goncalves Oliveira Jr. and Arthur Diego Mariano Lanci of Brazil and van de Velde and Matthew Immers of the Netherlands on the Volleyball World Seaside Professional Tour Elite 16 2024 in Brasilia, Brazil, Might 5, 2024. (Lucio Tavora/Xinhua by way of Getty Pictures)
“I can not reverse it, so I should bear the implications. It has been the largest mistake of my life,” he stated in 2018.
He returned to competing in worldwide competitions shortly after his launch from jail in 2017. Now, the Dutch volleyball federation, Nevobo, says van de Velde “meets all of the qualification necessities for the Olympic Video games and is due to this fact a part of the staff.”
“He was convicted on the time in keeping with English regulation, and he has served his sentence. From then on, we’ve got been in fixed contact with Steven, who has now been totally reintegrated into the Dutch volleyball group,” Nevobo said in a statement.
“He’s proving to be an exemplary skilled and human being, and there was no cause to doubt him since his return. We totally assist him and his participation in Paris, which he and [teammate] Matthew [Immers] have earned.”
Matthew Immers and Steven van de Velde of the Netherlands through the Seaside World Championships Tlaxcala 2023 at Tlaxcala Plaza de Toros Oct. 12, 2023, in Tlaxcala, Mexico. (Pablo Morano/BSR Company/Getty Pictures)
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“Already since 2017, Steven van de Velde — after an intensive professionally supervised course of with, amongst others, the probation service — is as soon as once more taking part in worldwide seashore volleyball tournaments,” the Dutch Olympic committee, NOC*NSF, stated in its personal assertion.
“On the time, the concerns and situations for return to top-level sports activities have been decided by each Nevobo and NOC*NSF partly on the premise of the Guideline Integrity Historical past of NOC*NSF, which units out, amongst different issues, the situations beneath which athletes in top-level sports activities can return after a conviction.”
It must be famous that the Dutch are not sending several golfers who certified for Paris after their Olympic committee stated their world rankings counsel they might not have a practical probability to compete.
The Netherlands Golf Federation stated in an announcement Tuesday it offered “intensive arguments and information” in a June 14 assembly with the Dutch committee, hopeful of displaying distinctive variations in golf in contrast with other sports.
Steven van de Velde of the Netherlands through the Seaside World Championships Tlaxcala 2023 at Tlaxcala Plaza de Toros Oct. 11, 2023, in Tlaxcala, Mexico. (Pablo Morano/BSR Company/Getty Pictures)
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“In accordance with them, it has not been demonstrated that there’s a cheap probability of a top-eight rating through the Olympic Video games,” the assertion stated.
The Netherlands’ greatest end in males’s seashore volleyball on the Olympics was a bronze medal in 2016.
Fox Information’ Paulina Dedaj contributed to this report.
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