Convicted Rapist Advances to Knockout Round in Olympic Beach Volleyball
With the crowd whistling and booing every time he served the ball, Dutch Olympian Steven van de Velde advanced on Friday to the knockout round in beach volleyball in Paris.
Convicted of raping a 12-year-old school girl in 2016, Van de Velde and his teammate Matthew Immers lost their final match in the preliminary competition to Norway, but still qualified to compete in playoffs on Sunday, where they will face Brazil.
Van de Velde, now 29, served 13 months in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of raping a British girl he met on Facebook (and later in person, after traveling to the United Kingdom) in 2014. He was 19 at the time. He served 12 months in the UK and was then extradited to the Netherlands, where he was released after one month because of more lenient underage sex laws. Van de Velde’s name remains on the UK’s list of registered sex offenders.