On one hand, the Olympic Games are a sporting event and past criminal convictions should not automatically disqualify someone from competing
But on the other hand, he raped a twelve year old girl. That's irredeemable.
Well, if they won't send him home, we should all just start calling the team "the Dutch Rapists".
Maybe if enough people do it, they might find a conscience?
Looking at the Dutch IOC website it looks like "internationalaffairs@nocnsf.nl" is their email address if you had anything you might like to say to them
If there's a reason why he's "not a pedophile" as they claim, let's hear their reasoning. Miscarriages of justice do occur, but there's no outcry that this dude got a raw deal. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I'll trust the verdict of the court, indicating that Steve van de Velde is a pedophile.
Be prepared for the "ephebophile" argument, which, if Wikipedia is to be believed anyway, is actually for ages 15-19, but it won't stop those who have twisted their minds into a knot to explain this away.
Or the "if there's grass on the field, play ball" argument (which is kind of ironic given the popularity of shaving it all off again.) which covers anyone who shows any sign of adolescent hair growth.
Or "she was asking for it / totally wanted it / shouldn't have been acting that way / shouldn't have been dressed like that".
Because those are all the soundest of arguments.
But the unspoken reason will be: "He's rich and famous and therefore he can do what the hell he wants with no consequences. F--k you."
How Roman Polanski of him
And the Donner Party weren't cannibals!
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/