The 29-year-old Dutch Olympic beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde was convicted in 2016 for three counts of raping a 12-year-old girl.
It has now been announced that van de Velde will not live in the Olympic Village in Paris with the other athletes and will not be allowed to speak to journalists.
According to the German newspaper Bild, it was the player himself who requested not to live in the Olympic Village. His teammate Matthew Immers will, however, live with the other athletes.
The decision not to allow van de Velde to live in the Olympic Village or speak to the media was made by the Dutch Olympic Committee to "create calm".
It was in 2014 that the then 19-year-old Steven van de Velde came into contact with the 12-year-old girl on Facebook, according to The Telegraph. He flew to the UK to meet the girl and confessed to three counts of rape in 2016. The Dutchman was sentenced to four years in prison for child rape.
I can't undo what's been done, so I have to take the consequences. It's the biggest mistake of my life, he said in an interview with the Dutch TV channel NOS in 2018.
After a short time in prison in the UK, van de Velde served his sentence in his home country, but was released in 2017 as his sentence was adjusted according to Dutch law. The same year, he resumed his sports career.
The Swedish world top players David Åhman and Jonatan Hellvig are medal favorites in Paris and have played matches against the Dutch duo during the spring – most recently in the World Tour tournament in Portugal in May – but in the Olympics, the teams will not be in the same group.
