A 12 (TWELVE) year old cannot consent in the UK. So that's a strawman argument.

Was it a violent rape? Or was it ~~a concensual get together but she was far too young and he was slapped hard for it~~ statutory rape because young children cannot consent?

FTFY. It was statutory rape. He groomed a 12 year old, and slept with her multiple times. It wasn’t just a spur of the moment thing; It was planned, and he went out of his way to convince the victim that having sex was her idea.

On one side, he, and society overall see it as he served his sentence (not all of it but that is not his fault)

To clarify: He was sentenced to several years where the crime happened, but was extradited to his home country after only a few months. After extradition, he didn’t serve any time. So he only served a few months total.

and is rehabilitated

He had repeatedly refused to even acknowledge it during the games, and tried to downplay it every single time he was directly asked. Not even so much as a “yeah I messed up but I’m doing my best to make up for it.” Just straight up refusal to engage. Refusing to even admit you messed up doesn’t really tell the public “yes this person has been rehabilitated.” And again, he only served a couple of months for the crime.

he made changes to his life after that and made sure he is not near minors alone again

The Olympic Games are mostly minors, and most of the athletes live and sleep in close proximity to one another for the duration of the games. The Olympics are also pretty notorious for the massive orgies that happen after hours. They even have special beds (which the athletes always complain about) designed to only hold the weight of one person, because they couldn’t find better ways to stop all the athletes from having hardcore sex parties every night. Almost as if cramming a bunch of the world’s most physically fit teens into a close space and forcing them to sleep in one giant hotel will lead to rampant sex.

He was a 19 year old man in the Netherlands talking to a 12 year old child in the United Kingdom on Facebook. He traveled to see her in the UK, got her drunk, raped her, and then attempted to get a hotel room with her. They couldn't, so they slept under a stairwell and he raped her twice the next day. She had told him at one point that he was hurting her, but that didn't stop him. After that, he flew back to the Netherlands and told her to go to a clinic for contraception.

So they were essentially strangers to each other with a significant age gap. I don't know what her exact intentions were when speaking with him, but she was 12. Even if she were thinking about sex, it would not have been with an understanding of what that actually meant. She wasn't just under age, she was well under the legal age of consent. There's a reason that children cannot legally consent to sex.

Also, he's never really shown any remorse for his actions. At best, he's said that it was the biggest mistake of his life, but his overall stance seems to be that he regrets getting caught rather than raping a child. He's much more angry at people calling him a pedophile than he is at himself for doing wrong. So your final points may be true, but they aren't really relevant to his case because it doesn't appear that he could be considered rehabilitated. He's merely completed a prison sentence which was made lighter by Dutch law not classifying his actions as rape at the time.