By Barbara Davies. The past has a way of catching up with criminals, particularly those whose victims are children. But in the case of Steven van de Velde, fate has had an odd way of showing it. There was revulsion and fury last week when it was revealed that the beach volleyball star will compete for the Netherlands at the Olympic Games in Paris this month.
A talented athlete he may be, but he is also a convicted child rapist, jailed in March after pleading guilty at Aylesbury Crown Court to three counts of rape against a year-old British girl he met via Facebook.
Beach volleyball star and convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde will compete for the Netherlands at the Olympic Games in Paris. Not only has van de Velde been welcomed back into the Dutch volleyball community and nurtured back onto an international pathway, but his personal life has also flourished.
In , he married a former policewoman from Munster in Germany who is also a professional beach volleyball player. The couple have a two-year-old son. Of course, there is nothing wrong with criminals rebuilding their lives once they have served their time. Serious questions are now being asked about how on earth a convicted child sex offender is being allowed to compete at the Olympics, whether the 6ft 6in blond star poses a threat to young female athletes and why no one has stepped in to block his selection?
Team GB has disqualifying rules around safeguarding issues and bringing the organisation into disrepute. Van de Velde was a year-old rising volleyball star in when he started chatting to the year-old girl via Facebook after she sent him a friend request. On August 2, he took an easyJet flight from Amsterdam to Luton airport, despite knowing how young the girl was. From there, he took a taxi to Milton Keynes and met up with his victim.
