A senior official with the Dutch Olympic committee has insisted that a convicted child rapist in its beach volleyball team is not a paedophile, in an email seen by the Guardian.
A concerned British man who has lived in the Netherlands for more than a decade, wrote to the Dutch Olympic committee and called the inclusion of Steven van de Velde in the team “a stain on the Dutch national side”. In a reply the Dutch Olympic committee spokesperson wrote: “Steven is NOT a peadophile [sic]; you really don’t think that de Dutch NOC would send someone to Paris who IS a real risk? No, he isn’t a risk.”
There has been mounting public anger at the presence of the beach volleyball player Van de Velde, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old British girl in 2016. Earlier this week the International Olympic Committee faced calls for an investigation into how a convicted child rapist has been allowed to compete at Paris 2024. The IOC has said the selection of athletes for the Games was the responsibility of individual committees.
There has been mounting public anger at the presence of the beach volleyball player Van de Velde, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old British girl in 2016. Earlier this week the International Olympic Committee faced calls for an investigation into how a convicted child rapist has been allowed to compete at Paris 2024. The IOC has said the selection of athletes for the Games was the responsibility of individual committees.
Van de Velde has consistently remained transparent about the case which he refers to as the most significant misstep of his life.
Raping a 12 year-old child is a misstep, people; relax! Yesterday I accidentally stepped in some dog poo; we’re exactly the same!!!
This dude has no place in the Olympics. The Dutch standing behind him is disgraceful.
I actually wholeheartedly believe in reintegration of convicted criminals in society. I also, maybe even more wholeheartedly, believe that pedophiles need to be open about it so that they can get the help to cope with their urges, and we should not be judgemental about it and stigmatize them ahead of time - the majority of SA offenders who attack minors are not pedophiles. You won’t prevent a pedophile from assaulting a minor by yelling at him for his preferences alone.
Now, that being said, fuck this guy. A misstep? If this happened in 2016 he should still be serving his sentence and definitely not be back on the Olympic team.
Ok, I looked it up: it happened in 2014, so he was 20 then. The age of consent in the Netherlands is surprisingly high (16), so you cannot even claim due diligence or anything. (I am from Germany and over here it is 14, and I have known a couple of 14-18+ relationships, and I could have seen a case where a German 18 year old guy has sexual relations with a British 15 year old and gets in trouble because of this.) He was sentenced to 4 years and served 1. One year for raping a 12 year old girl when he was 20. Wtf? The judges should be ashamed. And as for the Olympic team, shame on them too. This guy should not be representing your country.
Dunno if I’d call 16 “surprisingly high”, here in America, at least, it’s 18. To the extent anyone thinks we should change it (it’s not a common point of discussion, except that there’s legal inconsistency between ages of consent for sex, smoking, drinking, driving, owning firearms, etc.), they think it should be 21. We also have Romeo and Juliet laws, which protect relationships between minors and people of very close ages (such as between 17 yrs and 18 yrs) from the same level of punishment as an adult assaulting a minor.
It’s 14 in Germany? Yuck.
Why shouldn’t it be 14. With 14 you’re old enough to stand trial so you’re old enough to decide who you want to fuck. There’s staggered protections, though:
- No exploitation of lack of sense of sexual self-determination of under 16yolds if the perpetrator is over 21. Over 16 that sense is presumed to be present, and under 21yolds aren’t themselves considered mature enough to know what they’re doing. Also from 18-21 either juvenile or adult criminal law may apply, depends on the defendant.
- No sex against money or money-valued things (prostitution, sugar daddying) until 18, also no sex with persons in a position of authority, trust, care, etc (teacher, boss, whatnot). Also, no porn.
- No recruitment into prostitution under 21years old (side note that’s where a good chunk of the “human trafficking” statistic in Germany comes from. I’m not saying the law is bad all I’m saying we shouldn’t confuse chaining women to radiators with driving through the Romanian countryside asking gals whether they want to make lots of money).
Technically 13/14 relationships are illegal, but courts apply Radbruch’s formula to throw those cases out.
Yesterday I accidentally stepped in some dog poo; we’re exactly the same!!!
Classic poopiphile behavior.
Meanwhile a female equestrian was banned for hitting a horse.
Maybe she should’ve fucked it, that would be fine it seems? 🤣
Let’s not compare that, I’m happy she was banned. I know you don’t want to say it was ok, but the comparison could be used to pardon her behaviour.
gotta love how the terfs defending trans women being excluded from the olympics are still saying that a guy who sa’ed a 12 year old girl is just misunderstood. maybe it’s not actually about protecting children.
He might not be a pedophile, we’ll never know, but he sure is literally a convicted child molester, wtf
Oh, somebody already wrote that.
We don’t know it he’s a pedophile (strictly speaking that’s not a crime), but he surely is a child rapist which is the problem.
The whole situation aside… what is up with the email skills of the Dutch Olympic Committee? This email is legit worded like a text message or a Lemmy comment
"Steven is NOT a peadophile; you really don’t think that de Dutch NOC would send someone to Paris who IS a real risk? No, he isn’t a risk.”
The world has going immensely nuts;
- Genocide seems okay by most of the presidents.
- Calling for justice is a hate crime and gets you arrested.
- Racism and Fascism on the rise.
- Raping a 12 year old person seems to be okay, doesn’t get you labeled as a pedophile.
- Calling out that Zionism is in fact bad gets you the “antisemitic” name.
- Quoting Hitler seems to be okay
- Saying that you want to erase and nuke a whole group/race seems to be okay.
I’m seriously worried for the future.
All of those things happened in the past, too. Probably even more than now.
I think the difference, now, is that it gets called out a lot more. In the past, it happened quietly and people went along or pretended to not notice. Now, people are calling it out and the shitty people have to openly defend it.
With regard to this specific issue, you don’t even have to go looking for cases of young women being discouraged from reporting rape and sexual assault allegations against promising young athletes, because “think how you could hurt his future prospects” – examples are so plentiful that you can’t help but find them if you spend any time reviewing sports news. It’s really only been in the last decade or so that anybody has seriously pushed back against the idea that Johnny Sportsball’s ability to score points for the local team is more important than the safety and bodily autonomy of women.
You mean like the rapist Brock Allen Turner?
Sounds like the official isn’t a decent human being.
Right now, this is a bad look for Netherlands.
Let’s briefly set aside the fact that she was 12.
He was convicted of raping another person… period. That alone should disqualify him from representing his country at the Olympics.
Now back to your regular scheduled world wide publicity for Steven van de Velde, who repeatedly raped a 12 year old girl.
Yea, wtf is this shit? He’s a convicted rapist. The end.
But apparently not a pedophile. Not sure how that works, I’m also unclear on why it’s even relevant.
If he’d murdered someone would that be better or worse?
They just want to clarify that he’s not selective, he’d also rape adult women if given the opportunity.
Well actually, If you set aside her age it wouldn’t be rape at all, since it’s statutory rape. She technically consented and did things herself. But of course since she’s a child she can’t consent, she was manipulated by someone much older.
My point is her age is very important and should definitely not be set aside.
She technically consented
He got her drunk… Not only she was too young to consent, he made her drunk this invalidating any chance for valid consent even if she was much older.
They talked for a long time through messaging before hand and talked about having sex. Either way, she couldn’t consent she was just a child. Disgusting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_van_de_Velde
Under a treaty between the Netherlands and UK, Van de Velde was transferred to the Netherlands to serve his sentence. The sentence was at that time adjusted in line with Dutch law, and the charge of rape was substituted for that of fornication.[11] After serving a year of his original four year sentence, he was released from prison.[8]
So basically the Dutch think it’s ok for a 19 year old to get a 12 year old drunk and rape her.
The victim would eventually go on to self-harm and once overdosed.
Some people are saying it ok because it was consensual, this doesn’t make it sound very consensual to me.
Wtf.
Consensual? Kids cannot consent. Kids are confused, curious hormone bombs who are easily manipulated and tend to put a lot of trust in adults who sound like they know what they’re doing. That’s the entire point of why we place that responsibility on the adults, and not the kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
“Some people are saying…”
Who Tyler… Who are you talking about here?
You can’t have consensual sex with a 12 year old.
Further down in this thread. https://lemmy.ca/post/25818425/10643476
Also https://www.gbnews.com/sport/dutch-olympic-committee-defend-steven-van-de-velde-rape
De Telegraaf newspaper played down the conviction, insisting that “they had consensual sex” and that “sex with a 12-year-old girl is labelled as rape” in Britain, while in the Netherlands “punishment in this area is much milder”.
I agree with you.
That comment isn’t saying it was consensual; it’s saying her age is what made it nonconsensual, so you can’t just ignore her age.
Okay Mr. Official, if he is not a paedophile then what is he?
A lot of child molesters actually aren’t pedophiles (a minority, even, in some studies). Children are just generally easy targets for abuse
I’ve had to explain this so many times. The majority of molesters are not pedophiles and the majority of pedophiles are not molesters. Pedophilia is a disorder, one that people suffer from at that. There is a (almost certainly) sizable group of pedophiles who have never actually done anything wrong but are caught in the crossfire of anger and therefore can’t seek help/treatment.
Very important.
For Germans there is
https://kein-taeter-werden.de/
I’m sure there are other similar services in other countries.
Hebephile? Rapist for sure.
Van de Velde, who is now 29, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to raping the girl in Milton Keynes. He had flown to England to meet her in 2014 with full knowledge of her age, having met her on Facebook. He served 12 months in a British prison, before being transferred to his home country where he was released after a further month.
This does sound just a tiny bit pedoey.
Yeah. It would be extremely questionable but still a little believable if the situation was “we met at a club that was supposed to be 21 and up and I thought she just looked young.” The reality is he traveled to another country to rape someone he knew was a child.
I’m sorry, but in what world does this not make him a pedophile?
He went to a location to have sex with a 12-year old. There are loads of people in ass-pounding prison right now for those exact acts as pedos.
He’s a pedo and a rapist. This is some asinine Brock Turner level nonsense. The Dutch should be ashamed to have even accepted him back home let alone send him to the Olympics.
Most men who commit these crimes aren’t sexually attracted to children/adolescents. It’s the power trip behind it and the feeling of control. Unfortunately, they end up targeting children because they are so vulnerable.
Pedophilia is rather rare and can be treated easily but society and the media have done so much damage that people who are truly pedophiles are afraid to seek help.
Brock Allen Turner and this guy are sociopaths. Entitled, narcissistic shits who think they can have or do whatever they want.
