Steven van de Velde

Steven van de Velde (born 8 August 1994) is a Dutch beach volleyball player. He was convicted of child rape in 2016. He has qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics, with the Dutch Olympic Committee standing by their nomination.

Volleyball career
Van de Velde won the Under-20 Dutch National Championships in 2011. With partner Michiel van Dorsten he represented the Netherlands at the 2015 European Games. Together with partner Dirk Boehlé, he finished third at the Blooming Beach Aalsmeer of the 2018 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour.

Child rape
In August 2014 van de Velde, then 19 years old, raped a 12-year-old girl he had met on Facebook who lived in Milton Keynes, England. He travelled to her home and, when her mother was out gave her alcohol and then raped her several times at her home as well as near Furzton Lake which was nearby. The victim would eventually go on to self-harm and once overdosed. Van de Velde returned to the Netherlands after the rape, although he was eventually extradited to the United Kingdom and arrested in January 2016.

Sentencing and release
In March 2016, Van de Velde pleaded guilty at Aylesbury Crown Court to three counts of child rape, specifically the charge of "rape of a child under the age of 13". The judge sentenced Van de Velde to four years' imprisonment and placed him on the Violent and Sex Offender Register for life. During his sentencing remarks, the judge stated, "Your hopes of representing your country [as an Olympic athlete] now lie as a shattered dream" and "He [Van de Velde] has lost a stellar sports career and has been branded a rapist. Plainly it is a career end for him".

Under a treaty between the Netherlands and UK, Van de Velde was transferred to the Netherlands to serve his sentence. The sentence was at that time adjusted in line with Dutch law, and the charge of rape was substituted for that of fornication. After serving a year of his original four year sentence, he was released from prison. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) condemned his comments at the time, stating that his "lack of remorse and self-pity is breathtaking".

The Dutch Volleyball Association allowed him to resume his career as a beach volleyball player.

In 2024, he was controversially selected to represent the Netherlands in the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Later comments
Van de Velde returned to international competition in 2018, when he excused himself in an interview, saying that he (aged 19 at the time of the rapes): "made that choice in my life when I wasn't ready, I was a teenager still figuring things out. I was sort of lost". He has since described it as "the biggest mistake of [his] life"; British newspaper The Telegraph contrasted this with the statements he made upon his release in 2017, in which he railed against being described "as a sex monster, as a paedophile" and said comments made about his crime were "nonsense".

Personal life
He is married to Kim van de Velde ( Behrens), a German volleyball player who studied psychology and trained to become a police officer. They have one child. His brother-in-law is footballer Kevin Behrens, who plays for VfL Wolfsburg and the Germany national football team.