Paris Olympics: Dutch volleyball player and convicted child rapist draws boos and whistles

PARIS — The convicted child rapist playing beach volleyball for the Netherlands received a mixed response before his Olympic debut.

Steven van de Velde drew mostly muted applause on Sunday when he and his partner emerged from the Eiffel Tower Stadium tunnel and walked across the sand for the first time. Boos and whistles were far more audible when the stadium PA announcer introduced van de Velde before the match, but those were soon replaced by cheers from orange-clad Dutch fans once the match against an Italian team got underway.

They roared when van de Velde began the match with a big block. They oooohed when van de Velde unleashed a devastating cross-court kill on a key second-set point. A group of Dutch fans above the stadium tunnel even stood and applauded for van de Velde as he exited after he and partner Matthew Immers lost their opening match to the Italians in three close sets.

The response wasn’t so gentle from the international media horde that came to Sunday’s match. A few dozen reporters from at least eight different countries made a beeline to the mixed zone after the deciding third set where they waited to see if the Dutch would follow through with their pre-match plan not to allow van de Velde to speak to the media.

Van de Velde indeed did not show, leaving Immers and Dutch National Olympic Committee press officer John van Vliet to face a barrage of tough questions. A British reporter even asked van Vliet if van de Velde’s unwillingness to speak with the media made him “a coward as well as a child rapist.”

Immers told reporters that he was “disappointed” by all the focus on van de Velde’s past conviction, particularly after their “hard fight” to qualify for the Olympics. Van Vliet defended the Dutch’s decision to honor van de Velde’s request to stay in a hotel rather than at the Olympic Village and to allow him to skip out on post-match mixed zone interviews.

“As an NOC [National Olympic Committee], we are here to create an environment for all our athletes in which they can perform well,” van Vliet said.

When asked if that made it seem like the Dutch were protecting a convicted child rapist, van Vliet responded, “We are protecting a convicted child rapist to do his sport as best as possible for a tournament in which he qualified for.”

The firestorm of controversy surrounding van de Velde, now 29, stems from an incident that took place almost a decade ago.

In August 2014, when he was 19, van de Velde flew to England to meet a 12-year-old girl who he had befriended after she began following him on Facebook. The victim told her parents she was staying with a friend and snuck out to try to book a hotel room with van de Velde in her hometown a little over an hour’s drive north of London.

Van de Velde knew how young she was when they drank Bailey’s Irish Cream together. He knew how young she was when they slept on cardboard boxes under a hotel stairway after they couldn’t get a room. He knew how young she was when they had several sexual encounters.

Before he returned to the Netherlands, van de Velde advised the victim to get the morning-after pill because they had not used contraception. Staff at a family planning clinic alerted the victim’s family and the police because of her age.

At his 2016 sentencing hearing, van de Velde wept when he learned the victim had experienced guilt and had been self harming, the Milton Keynes Citizen reported. Judge Francis Sheridan issued a scathing rebuke, according to the newspaper, telling van de Velde that “the emotional harm that has been caused to this child is enormous” and that “as she matures she will have to come to realize that you are not the nice man she thought you were.”

“Prior to coming to this country you were training as a potential Olympian,” Sheridan added. “Your hopes of representing your country now lie as a shattered dream.”

That prediction hasn’t held up as time has passed. Van de Velde only served 13 months of his four-year prison sentence. Twelve of those months came in England. He then was transferred back home to the Netherlands and released after a month as a result of the country’s more lenient laws concerning statutory rape.

In interviews with Dutch media shortly after his release, van de Velde said he initially broke off contact with the victim when she revealed that she was 12, but conversations picked up again when he sought comfort from her. The sexual encounters, van de Velde said, were “the biggest mistake of my life.”

“I did what I did,” van de Velde said. “I can’t reverse it, so I have to live with the consequences.”

At home in the Netherlands, those consequences have been modest. The Dutch volleyball federation welcomed van de Velde back after he sought and received professional counseling and demonstrated “self-insight and reflection.” Over the past three years, van Vliet said Sunday, van de Velde has played “at least 100 tournaments in beach volleyball where [his rape conviction] was never brought up.”

The response has been different across Europe and beyond since van de Velde and Immers qualified for the Olympics. International media outlets have shined a spotlight on van de Velde’s disturbing history, social media users have expressed outrage over his inclusion on the Dutch Olympic team and sexual assault victim advocacy groups have called for him to withdraw from Paris 2024 or face a ban.

"His participation sends a message to everyone that sporting prowess trumps crime," said Kate Seary, co-founder and director of UK-based Kyniska Advocacy.

An open letter from The Brave Movement earlier this month said, “There is still time for Van de Velde to withdraw. There is still time for the Dutch Olympic Association, NOC*NSF, to withdraw him. We believe that is the only appropriate action.”

Asked what his message would be to survivors of sex crimes, van Vliet said he had “no message.”

“We respect every opinion on this matter,” he said.

Van Vliet and Immers both said the Dutch have been surprised by the response to van de Velde playing in the Olympics after so many years without complaints.

“In general, sex-related crimes are definitely a much bigger issue than sport,” van Vliet said, “but in his case we have a person who has been convicted, who did his sentence and who did everything afterward that he could do to be able to compete again.