A convicted child rapist will compete at the Paris Olympics. Where is the outrage?

Among the approximately 10,500 athletes at the Paris Olympics and the 5000 accredited coaches and support personnel, it is inevitable there will be some dubious types, some of whom have committed serious crimes.

Just examine the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ for 2022-23. About 1500 per 100,000 Australians, aged over 10 years, were prosecuted for some type of criminal offence.

Steven van de Velde pleaded guilty to three charges of rape in England and served time in prison before being deported.Credit: AP

If that’s Australia’s statistics, it’s not exactly a quantum leap to suggest these figures will at least be mirrored in many foreign jurisdictions and may even be low compared to some.

So we can take it as read that there will be people with criminal histories, who have served their sentences, competing at the Olympics. With the starkness of that reality duly noted, there must still be limits, though, surely? For example, it would be difficult to countenance a rehabilitated murderer taking to the track in the Stade de France.

But what about a convicted rapist?

In The Netherlands, the Dutch Olympic Committee-Dutch Sports Federation (NOC-NSF) is the body that’s the equivalent of the Australian Olympic Committee. Like the AOC, the NOC-NSF is charged with the authority and responsibility of selecting Dutch athletes to compete at the Olympics.

Late last month the NOC-NSF announced its selections for The Netherlands’ beach volleyball team. One of those athletes is convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde.

In the current FIVB men’s beach volleyball world rankings, van de Velde, 30, is one half of the 10th-highest ranked duo in the world.

On that basis alone, there must be some chance that he will be on the podium when the medals are handed out.

The problem, though, is whether van de Velde should be in Paris in the first place. If we were talking about his being nominated by the NOC-NSF for the Los Angeles Olympics in four years’ time, there wouldn’t actually be any discussion because van de Velde wouldn’t get through US immigration. If his career stretched to Brisbane 2032, it is also highly likely he would be rejected by Australia’s immigration minister.

By 2014, van de Velde had already earned quite the reputation as a beach volleyballer of international standard. At the same time, and shortly after his 21st birthday, van de Velde connected with a 12-year-old British girl on Facebook. Enamoured and transfixed, van de Velde travelled to England, met the girl, raped her and took her virginity. He then returned to Amsterdam.

An artist’s impression of the Eiffel Tower Stadium, which will host beach volleyball at the Paris Games.

In 2016, van de Velde was extradited to England and arrested on arrival. Two months later, he was sentenced. He pleaded guilty to three charges of rape, which was the first decent thing he did, as it spared the victim the prospect of giving evidence and being cross-examined.

In sentencing van de Velde, Judge Francis Sheridan noted the age of his victim as well as the fact the victim’s age was known to him at the time of the crimes. The court imprisoned van de Velde for four years. Hardly enough, but that’s another issue.

After a year incarcerated in England, van de Velde was deported to The Netherlands to serve the remainder of his sentence. The Dutch legal system permitted the English sentence to be adjusted according to Dutch law; van de Velde was released soon after.

By all reports, van de Velde is genuinely remorseful for his past crimes and there’s no suggestion he’s committed more crimes since.

If van de Velde was an Australian athlete, there’d be no discussion to be had here. The AOC’s “ethical behaviour by-law” operates to forbid the selection of a person who has been convicted of any crime with a sexual basis, or any offence involving children.

The NOC-NSF, though, marches to the beat of its own drum. It has stated that van de Velde has met all relevant qualification requirements and is therefore “part of the team”.

And therein lies the problem: if those qualification requirements are so lax as to result in the selection of a convicted child rapist and the housing of that convicted child rapist in the Olympic Village, with everyone else who also will be eating, living and sleepingthere, is that a tolerable situation?

Consider that some of the Olympic skateboarding teams have athletes who are roughly the same age as van de Velde’s British victim. Nobody should feel comfortable about the Dutchman being in their orbit.

True to form, the International Olympic Committee will say that matters of athlete selection are matters solely for the determination of National Olympic Committees.

The IOC’s position is consistent with what the Olympic Charter says, but that’s not to conclude also that the IOC’s position is satisfactory when considering important matters of safeguarding. After all, we’re talking here about the presence of an athlete who’d have remarkably less than a snowball’s chance in hell of obtaining a Working With Children Check certification in any Australian state or territory.

Would there be international outrage if a convicted murderer, who pleaded guilty to the crime and served their sentence, was competing at the Olympics? Highly likely. And yet there’ll be a child rapist living in the Olympic Village.

Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.