Dutch volleyball player who raped 12 year old British girl qualifies for Olympics

[NonCrimeHakeIncident]

https://uk.yahoo.com/sports/news/dutch-volleyball-player-raped-12-193257270.html

His lawyer at the time said “It’s plainly a career end for him”……..

Does the article say where this happened in Berlin? Which park @biscuitandcake ?

It was Hamburg's Stadtpark. I read another German article about Berlin and got confused sorry. There is an (I think American) article here GERMANY: Woman Convicted Of “Offending” Migrant Gang Rapists Receives Longer Prison Sentence Than The Rapists - The Publica. They definitely have an "angle" however the information seems accurate. I tried to find the original article in german - I definately read about it a while ago, but as I said, the search terms I use keep turning up articles about different instances and I don't want to keep reading them to find the right one frankly.

I know it sounds like I sit around reading articles about rape in Germany all day. I don't. But I read German news/social media to keep my German good if that makes sense. And that story... stuck in the mind. Maybe it needs its own thread.

@Magnethings articles here if you speak German (or want to use the translate function) Nachrichten aus Hamburg und der Welt - Hamburger Abendblatt . A few things - I said she was 14, she was actually 15. Also the articles talk about the defendants being "juveniles" but their age range would have been from 17 to 20 at the time of the crime so NOT little boys. Also there is quite a lot of focus in those articles on "threats against the judge" "adverse public reaction" which yes, threats aren't OK but its the balance of articles is weird.

I don't know why I feel so committed to posting evidence about this. I think its because its so awful it sounds like I'm making it up/imagined it but I checked and I'm not. Sorry for derailing the thread.

I suspect the IOC won't accept this man and the whole issue will die down, except that I assume the Dutch will still allow him to win medals within the Netherlands. Very odd values on their part.

Yeah of course this goes on everywhere! Probably shouldn't have said anything, it's just weird to me that the Netherlands is seen in a particular way and that's not my experience.

Anyway I'll shut up now and message the Olympic Committee 😅

I don't know why I feel so committed to posting evidence about this. I think its because its so awful it sounds like I'm making it up/imagined it but I checked and I'm not. Sorry for derailing the thread.

Because it's a terrible injustice. Thank you for bringing it up.

Don’t ever shut up.

I am not surprised by what you say either.

Thank you. I am glad you did. It gets buried but it is not part of a decent society at all.

Please don’t shut up.

Sing your song. Tell your story. We all have a song or story to tell. Every note and every word is important and needs to be heard.

Must be heard.

🌻

Don't shut up! I do think I know exactly what you mean about how the Netherlands is perceived versus its reality.

The problem for me is that the far right are blaming these incidents on the "foreign" values of the men committing the rape - when its really clear on some level the German authorities share those

I think this is right. Like happened to the Rotherham girls and others in the grooming gangs, with the police turning a blind eye.

No doubt those German all orifices on demand brothels ( and I think there are other nasty elements) are full of trafficked Eastern European very young girls too.

Yes, Liberal can be a very nasty thing.

Fucking he'll. What planet are we on that this paedophile has been selected to represent his country. No, you don't get to just wipe your criminal past. I'd there any moral code left in this world.

Isn't the Netherlands perceived as Liberal, precisely because of its history of exploiting women?

Rotherham could never have happened without systemic misogyny.

And yes, the situation in Germany regarding the sex trade, is utterly repulsive.

Not derailing at all @biscuitandcake
I think I have heard Ayaan Hirsi Ali talk about this problem in Germany - that issues with migrant men are played down in the media. It sounded slightly like when TRAs argue that there have been no issues with Self-ID in countries where it’s been brought in - how would anyone know? If it is suppressed in the media or people aren’t even allowed to discuss it in the first place without being called a bigot or only media sources that you don’t approve of or won’t listen to will report it.

That poor, poor girl.

RiverF · Today 18:04

“biscuitandcake · Today 17:34
Don't shut up! I do think I know exactly what you mean about how the Netherlands is perceived versus its reality.”

Isn't the Netherlands perceived as Liberal, precisely because of its history of exploiting women?

That’s a very good way of looking at their so called liberal approach. They think they are progressive because they’ve removed barriers to doing this.

In my searching around about beach volleyball on various sports related websites I've found these and am posting the links in case they are of use.

The IOC has a webpage listing minimum ages for athletes. These ages are apparently set by each participating country. GB (and many other countries) are 13+. France is 15+. The Netherlands is 16+. How would France and the Netherlands plan on supervising a known sex offender who might be around such young athletes? Would the managers of other country's teams with under-age competitors be told about him (or any others, he might not be the only one)? Presumably all of the athletes will have access to shared spaces within the athletes' village eg. training and catering facilities.
https://olympics.com/en/age-consent

In sports that I'm more familiar with, UK teams have nominated welfare officers and supervision should be high, although it still has the potential to fail. It may not be like that for other countries, even ones that look fine on the surface, eg. Nassar et al being 'hidden' in US gymnastics.

The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) seems to be the regulatory body responsible for all forms of volleyball worldwide. They maintain a database of the results of all relevant international competitions and it's possible to search it for individual players. This is Steven Van de Velde's page: https://www.fivb.com/players/players-database/player/138207
It shows that he was competing regularly on the international stage up to 28th Aug 2015, then there was a gap until May 13th 2017 when he resumed. He's then competed regularly ever since, including at European and World Championships.

Why hasn't there been any publicity about him in the sports' world before now?

It is being reported in the Dutch media now, but very much in the lines of "foreign media being mean about our guy." Volleyball federation stands behind Olympian Van de Velde after foreign fuss about sex case | Olympic Games | NU.nl To be fair, that automatic translate of the word fuss isn't quitr right. But the whole article MASSIVELY downplays it. I am actually genuinely disgusted - I would like to think that if a UK sports hero raped a 12 year old girl in another country we/the media wouldn't downplay it to the same extent. Maybe I'm wrong,

Also this quote (translated from Dutch)
Van de Velde told his story in the AD in 2017.He took the blame "in everything." Van de Velde, who was nineteen years old at the time, had come into contact with the twelve-year-old girl online. "We both had our problems, which was an attraction," he said. "But this should never have happened. Never, never, never."

Her "problem" is that she was a 12 year old girl groomed by a monster. His "problem" is that he is a fucking nonce.

Some of the comments on that are awful.

Oh god this is horrific. Sport is clearly more important than girls..

I don't understand. The article says:

Van de Velde, now 29, was sentenced to four years in prison in England in 2016 for having sex with a minor, which is 'rape' under English law and 'indecent' under Dutch law.

Sex with kids isn't rape in the Netherlands? It seems to be a much lesser crime, because the article says that the reason he got out so quickly was because his sentence was reduced according to Dutch law.

It is less of a crime. The whole argument for that is that its because children of the same age shouldn't be criminalised blah blah blah. But as you can see, not only does the law allow grown adults to get away with lesser sentences but it also allows the media to massively downplay what happened/the severity of the crime. They also completely fail to mention that he premeditated the whole thing AND gave her lots of alcohol to make her drunk so he could have sex with her repeatedly. Its almost implying she came on to him, or leaves it open to that interpretation.

There has been continual advocating for the lowering of boundaries on consent etc. The argument for the existence of political parties advocating for paedophiles etc was always "we know its wrong, but we tolerate the right to say it" sort of thing. But clearly vast swathes of the Dutch establishment don't really think its wrong at all.

WTAF is the place run by paedophiles?! Children can't give consent to sex. She was 12 FFS! The argument that she could have given consent to someone her own age is child abusing nonsense.

I read that in Google translate:

sex with a minor, which is 'rape' under English law and 'indecent' under Dutch law.

After a year he was extradited, the sentence was adjusted to Dutch standards and he was released.

So in Holland sex with a minor is it rape just indecent. And though English standards for sentencing are pretty low, when adjusted to Dutch ones they more or less vanish altogether.

As I already posted earlier today Holland has the highest rate of child sexual abuse porn in the EU.