some of the people on here (probably parents thinking of this happening to their daughter) have forgotten all males are biologically programmed to be sexually attracted to any female that has gone through puberty, and at 12 she probably was well on the way. not saying it's right in the context of the social constructs we have built in the western world, but it's a normal human urge. don't like it, don't blame me, blame biology.
There is a huge difference between "biologically programmed to be sexually attracted" and acting on that attraction in the way that van de Velde did. How about some more attempts at minimizing and justifying? 19 and 12...
sure but that depends how obedient you are. a slightly sociopathic person especially at 19 might not be considerate of laws or fully aware of the potential consequences.
if you think im wrong, explain clearly with sound reasoning why. don't get mad because you dont like how the world works, that doesnt do any good at all.
Yes, feminists lobbied the EU to mandate that every member state define sex below a certain age as rape, in addition to existing age of consent laws. So while the age of consent is 16 in the UK, it's considered rape if the girl is under 13, no matter if she was willing or not. In Germany, the age of consent is 14, and they set the age at 14. In France it's 15, like the age of consent there.
He obviously made a huge mistake, but FFS he was a teenager who had sex with a willing 12 year old who had lied to him that she was 16. To portray him as a 'child rapist' for life and ban him from the athlete's village as though he is going to creep into the beds of female athletes and rape them is pretty awful. We're turning medieaval again when it comes to our punishments for even relatively minor sex crimes committed by males who were practically adolescents themselves.
I remember when I was growing up and it was quite common for girls in my class at 13 or 14 to be sleeping with 18 and 19 year olds. Nobody really thought anything of it. We used to laugh at the puritanical stupidity of Americans for locking up 18 year olds for having sex with 14 year olds. Now even in Europe they are branded online as paedophiles or child rapists for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, US presidents probably do a lot worse and get away with it.
I’m not outraged by what he did. It’s just a technical violation. The age of consent is an arbitrary marker of maturity anyway because we need some marker for law. Nothing changes from the night before to the morning after of that marker.
Let’s just laugh it off like we do when boys get willingly “raped” by pretty high school teachers.
He is a scumbag but he paid his debt as per the govt right?
He maybe paid his debt but that doesn't mean he should still enjoy the priviliges another may enjoy.
By law - yes he should.
That is the point of paying your debt to society. By most legal systems you are punished and rehabilitate and rejoin society.
You advocate for a social debtors prison and endless punishment. The same punishment could be done for anything wrong you have done in your life. Endless punishment.
if you think im wrong, explain clearly with sound reasoning why. don't get mad because you dont like how the world works, that doesnt do any good at all.
You didn't provide any reasoning whatsoever but I'm supposed to do so? It is simply wrong that every male is biologically programmed to be sexually attracted to any female that has gone through puberty. That you're a coping pedophile won't change that.
There are some serious mental gymnastics going on this post.
This isn't a 19-year old marrying a 12 year-old in a country where that is normalized. The Netherlands is a Western country and (while more liberal than many) it is not okay to have sex with a twelve year old.
This also isn't a case where he was under the false impression that the girl was sixteen. While that initially was the case, he later discovered her age and still booked a plane ticket to go see her. That's about as premeditated as it gets with a lot of time for sober reflection.
Yes, people do dumb things while their brains aren't fully formed (and brains aren't fully formed by nineteen) and we should take that into account when punishing them. However, when a teenager acts this far outside social mores and legal boundaries, they still need to be held accountable.
This thread does raise two interesting points for me:
1) The athlete was punished for this offence. Should the privilege of attending the Olympics be solely based on athletic achievement or should previous immoral/criminal behaviour outside the sport be considered? Other athletes with criminal pasts have competed in the olympics before.
2) Discussions of sexual assault/rape always seem to leave people on two sides. On one side is a group who feel the perpetrator is an irredeemable monster. On the other side is a group who looks at what the perpetrator did and, if it doesn't fit with the classic description of a violent rape, feels that everyone is overreacting and it wasn't really all that wrong. This probably stems from the fact that we view sexual assault/rape as the most abhorrent thing that a person can do. Polls in the US show that about half of Americans view rape as worse than murder.
In recent years, more and more behaviours which used to be viewed as a "bad date" are being classified as sexual assault/rape. In some cases (e.g. colleges where any degree of intoxication leads to inability to consent) this classification is not even in keeping with legal standards. It's unsurprising that there is a strong backlash in these specific scenarios given the label of "rapist" still carries enormous weight.
There is a huge difference between "biologically programmed to be sexually attracted" and acting on that attraction in the way that van de Velde did. How about some more attempts at minimizing and justifying? 19 and 12...
12 is absurdly low for this arguement. Nobody in college is talking about how hot that 6th grader that their younger sister is friends with is. Tell me she is 15-17 and we can start talking about being sexually attractive and how it is still wron go to act on it.
Even the midevil people understood this where those child bride marriages weren’t consummated for several years..
There is a huge difference between "biologically programmed to be sexually attracted" and acting on that attraction in the way that van de Velde did. How about some more attempts at minimizing and justifying? 19 and 12...
12 is absurdly low for this arguement. Nobody in college is talking about how hot that 6th grader that their younger sister is friends with is. Tell me she is 15-17 and we can start talking about being sexually attractive and how it is still wron go to act on it.
Even the midevil people understood this where those child bride marriages weren’t consummated for several years..
Kids in middle school are sexually active. We do not know what the 12 year old victim looked like, but girls are hitting puberty much earlier. My kid is in middle school and some of the girls in his class look like they could be in high school. 19 year old boys are ready to have sex with anyone, anywhere at any time.
Van de Velde's case is not a good one in that he seemed to do some grooming and used alcohol. But it is a very difficult issue of drawing a line between the sexual debut of girls being consensual, but too soon and what should be considered rape or pedophilia. Making a girl who has become sexually active at too young an age a party to a criminal proceeding against a boy who she may very well have had a real romantic attraction to may be very damaging to the girl as opposed to just cutting off the relationship and getting the girl counseling. When the conduct is criminalized, you are basically telling young girls that the state controls when they can become sexually active and that anyone who is sexually attracted to them before they reach the age of consent is a rapist. That is a very difficult background to live with for a young girl who is trying to decide when she is ready to become sexually active.
I used to work with high school kids. I can say with certainty that the age of consent laws were no barrier to those kids having sex with each other. If age of consent laws were strictly enforced, a third of those kids would have criminal records. If we want kids to delay their sexual debut, we need to talk to kids openly about sex and why it is better to wait. Instead, we let kids be sexualized in the media (the Van de Velde victim was on social media) and pretend like they aren't going to want to have sex because Jesus told them to wait until they marry.
He obviously made a huge mistake, but FFS he was a teenager who had sex with a willing 12 year old who had lied to him that she was 16. To portray him as a 'child rapist' for life and ban him from the athlete's village as though he is going to creep into the beds of female athletes and rape them is pretty awful. We're turning medieaval again when it comes to our punishments for even relatively minor sex crimes committed by males who were practically adolescents themselves.
"Medieaval" (medieval) is an interesting choice of words here, since girls were allowed to marry beginning at 12 in the middle ages (at least according to church law). If you just mean "unfairly harsh punishments," fine, but a 19-year old dude was fine to have sex with a 12-year old so long as he married her back then. Oh, and also the standards for "rape" were much higher back then - a woman had to physically resist otherwise she was considered to have wanted it. I would hardly say our laws today about sex look anything like Medieval law
I have been following this news story for a little bit. According to his side of the story, they met online and she said that she was 16. He fell in love but then he found out that she was actually 12. He broke off contact but when he was going through a though time, he reached out again. He flew over to the UK and they drank alcohol together and had sex.
UK law states that any sex with a 12 year old is rape, because a 12 year old can’t consent to sex. Dutch law classifies this as “ontucht” which is kind of like 2nd degree rape. There was consent, but it was not legal consent. He spent a year in jail in the UK and was then transferred to the Netherlands. Because the Netherlands classifies this crime differently, he only spent another month or so in jail in the Netherlands.
A lot of news outlets open with “athlete convicted of raping a 12 year old is going to the Olympics” and then obviously people are outraged. The full story is a bit more nuanced, but even then his actions were disgusting. As a Dutch person, I definitely won’t be cheering for him.
Now, should he be allowed to compete at the Olympics? I don’t really know. He met all the athletic qualification criteria, so it would be down to some sort of judge of moral character. Should the IOC, or maybe the Dutch association, exclude people based on past behavior outside the sport? And if so, what criteria should they use?
NFL players play if they’re good enough.
Tyreek Hill beat his wife / girlfriend yet is routinely praised
Reading some of these responses - reminder for parents/guardians etc that idiots and sociopaths who would try to minimize or explain away this sort of crime are not uncommon. Apparently no comprehension of the damage that can be done to a child by a RAPIST like van de Velde.
She lied about her age. Do you expect him to ask for ID?
Some of you seem to have never met a 12 year old, or been 19. When I was 19 I worked in a childcare position for a summer, and the oldest kids were 12-13 years old. When I tell you they looked like toddlers, I'm only slightly exaggerating. Knowingly engaging in relations with one of them would just be absolutely predatory and disgusting. Also, a few extra things:
1. 19 to 16 is already a very large gap that no mature 19 year old would be ok with. 2. Flying out is pathetic. 3. He didn't use protection and advised her to get a plan B pill.
Yes, feminists lobbied the EU to mandate that every member state define sex below a certain age as rape, in addition to existing age of consent laws. So while the age of consent is 16 in the UK, it's considered rape if the girl is under 13, no matter if she was willing or not. In Germany, the age of consent is 14, and they set the age at 14. In France it's 15, like the age of consent there.
He obviously made a huge mistake, but FFS he was a teenager who had sex with a willing 12 year old who had lied to him that she was 16. To portray him as a 'child rapist' for life and ban him from the athlete's village as though he is going to creep into the beds of female athletes and rape them is pretty awful. We're turning medieaval again when it comes to our punishments for even relatively minor sex crimes committed by males who were practically adolescents themselves.
I remember when I was growing up and it was quite common for girls in my class at 13 or 14 to be sleeping with 18 and 19 year olds. Nobody really thought anything of it. We used to laugh at the puritanical stupidity of Americans for locking up 18 year olds for having sex with 14 year olds. Now even in Europe they are branded online as paedophiles or child rapists for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, US presidents probably do a lot worse and get away with it.
Cant believe you defend rape. The fact that he was 19 is irrelevant. When I was 19 I did not fly to another country to have sex with someone who I knew was not of age.
That's because it is rape. He knew that she was 12. It's completely wrong. How on earth are you trying to make out that it's OK? He found out that she was 12 years old and still had sex with her, it's child rape. A child cannot consent, no matter the circumstances. That law protects children from that vile defence. People use it with 9 year olds abroad btw. That they 'wanted to'. It's completely wrong and disgusting. A 12 year old is a child.
if a 12 year old is a child, and I wouldn't disagree, then you can make a case for a 19 year old not really being an adult either, since their brains have not fully formed. it isn't rape. it's statutory rape. there is a big difference - hence the reason why they are called different things in courtrooms.
some of the people on here (probably parents thinking of this happening to their daughter) have forgotten all males are biologically programmed to be sexually attracted to any female that has gone through puberty, and at 12 she probably was well on the way. not saying it's right in the context of the social constructs we have built in the western world, but it's a normal human urge. don't like it, don't blame me, blame biology.
It is rape. A 12 year old can not consent. Do you understand how easy it would be for a 19 year old to pressure a 12 year old. Comically easy, so no matter what the child says he has to be smart and know she can not agree to this.