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Dutch volleyballer and convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde denied Australian visa (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/europe@feddit.org
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[โ€“] whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 weeks ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_van_de_Velde

In 2014, Van de Velde, aged 19, met with a 12-year-old girl who sent him a friend request on Facebook. In August 2014, aware of her age, he travelled to her home town, Milton Keynes, gave her alcohol and raped her.[3] That same night, Van de Velde tried to stay at a hotel with his victim but was denied a room, so they slept under a staircase.[4] Van de Velde raped the victim twice the next day.[3] During one of the three rapes, the victim told Van de Velde that he was hurting her.[5]

Van de Velde returned to the Netherlands after the rapes[6] and told his victim to go to a sexual health clinic for emergency contraception.[5] He was extradited to the United Kingdom and arrested in January 2016.[6] Sentencing and release

In March 2016, Van de Velde pleaded guilty at Aylesbury Crown Court to three counts of child rape, specifically the charge of rape of a child under the age of 13. The judge sentenced Van de Velde to four years' imprisonment and placed him on the UK sex offender registry, where his name remains.[7] During his sentencing remarks, the judge said, "Your hopes of representing your country [as an Olympic athlete] now lie as a shattered dream" and "he has lost a stellar sports career being branded a rapist. Plainly it is a career end for him".[8]

Under a treaty between the Netherlands and UK, Van de Velde was transferred to the Netherlands to serve his sentence. The sentence was adjusted in line with Dutch law, and the charge of rape was substituted for one referring to ontucht ("sexual acts that violate social-ethical norms").[9][10] After serving 13 months of his original four-year sentence, he was released from prison.[6] Until 1 July 2024, Dutch law only recognised rape if force was involved.[11]

After his release in 2017, Van de Velde complained about "all the nonsense" reporting on his crime in the media, claiming that the term pedophile did not apply to him.[12] He also said he had not read the reporting he was criticizing.[13] The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in Britain condemned his comments at the time, stating that his "lack of remorse and self-pity is breathtaking".[6] He later claimed that he "made that choice in my life when I wasn't ready, I was a teenager still figuring things out. I was sort of lost".[14] He has described it as "the biggest mistake of my life".[15] His later participation in the Olympics was criticized by The Survivors Trust as a "further endorsement of the shocking toleration [as a society that] we have of child sexual abuse".[4]