Jesse Scheckner
In a move that should make everyone wonder why it’s not the policy already, Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book of Davie has launched a petition demanding that the International Olympic Committee (OIC) ban convicted pedophiles from participating in the Olympic Games.
The reason: Convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde, a 29-year-old Dutch beach volleyball player who served prison time for having sex with a 12-year-old when he was 19, has been allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics.
More on that later.
Book, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who founded the nonprofit Lauren’s Kids to combat the crime, said that regardless of national borders, “we must send a clear and unequivocal message that child sexual abuse is intolerable and will be met with the utmost consequences.”
“This means holding abusers accountable and ensuring they do not have the opportunity to regain positions of influence and trust, particularly in high-profile events like the Olympics,” she said. “The IOC, as a leading international organization, has a moral obligation to uphold these standards and set an example for others to follow. The world is watching.”
In 2014, Book delivered the keynote address at the Dutch National Rapporteur on Human Trafficking’s “Symposium on Sexual Violence Children” in conjunction with the Netherlands’ first-ever national study on child sexual abuse.
She advised the organization on setting national guidelines for child safety, but said Tuesday that she remains concerned with the country’s lax laws, beliefs and cultural mores around child sexual abuse and abusers. The country has no sexual abuse registry and sets light punishment for abusers. In some cases, the country permits convicted child sexual predators to volunteer at schools or parks where children gather to offer repentance for their crime.
“The safety and trust of our children and communities must take precedence over individual redemption,” she said. “When it comes to the Olympic Games, it is irresponsible and offensive for the IOC to stand idly by.”
Van de Velde was sentenced in 2016 after admitting that he flew from Amsterdam to a small north London airport in 2014 to have sex with a 12-year-old girl with whom he’d been speaking frequently online. Authorities caught him after he advised the victim to get a morning-after pill and staff at a family planning clinic reported him to the girl’s family.
He ultimately served just over a year behind bars.
On Sunday, van de Velde received a mixture of boos and applause when he was introduced before losing his opening match. Asked if the Dutch Olympic team was protecting a convicted child rapist, team spokesperson John van Vliet said, “We are protecting a convicted child rapist to do his sport as best as possible and for a tournament which he qualified for.”
“The general matter of sex conviction and sex-related crime is definitely a more important issue than sport,” van Vliet said after the match. “In his case, we’ve got a person who has been convicted, who did his sentence, who did everything afterwards which he can do to be able to compete again.”
Van de Velde’s next match is on Wednesday against Chile. A second loss would create a difficult, but not impossible, road to the knockout round.
Another petition calling on the IOC to ban known sex offenders from competing received nearly 81,000 signatures by Thursday, the New York Times reported. A Change.org petition aimed solely at van de Velde, started Saturday, has more than 5,600 signatures.
This isn’t the first time the Olympics were tarnished by child sex abuse. An internal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department found that the FBI turned a “blind eye” to early reports of abuses by Larry Nassar, a former team doctor for the U.S. gymnastics team, before he was charged in 2016 for serial child rape in one of the largest sexual abuse scandals in sports history.
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Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Republished with permission.
