There was a certain, sickening irony to Steven van de Velde disembarking his Eurostar train earlier this week, with a ring of security personnel around him. The Dutch beach volleyball player and convicted sex offender is benefitting from extra protection in Paris for the Olympics , after backlash over his selection by the Dutch Olympic Committee. He should not be in Paris at all.
It should go without saying, but as a convicted child rapist he should not be permitted to compete at the Olympics. Ten years ago, a 19-year-old Van de Velde travelled to the United Kingdom to meet a British schoolgirl, 12, and raped her. He was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 for three counts of rape, and the judge told him it put an end to all his dreams of competing at the Olympics.
But the judge was wrong, as here we are talking about him eight years later at the most high-profile sporting event in the world. Read Next Russian spy arrest raises fears of more sabotage attacks at Olympics It would be naive to think the Olympics exist as a squeaky-clean event – previous drug scandals and political wrangling have proven that is not the case. This still feels like a new low though.
Van de Velde served just one year in prison after being allowed to return to the Netherlands and see out his sentence under the Dutch system. He called his actions the “biggest mistake of my life” but upon his release also reportedly disputed being “branded as a sex monster, as a paedophile”.