A convicted child rapist whose selection for the Dutch volleyball team has sparked a huge controversy ahead of the Olympics is married to a glamorous fellow star athlete with whom he has a young son, we can reveal.
Steven van de Velde, 29, has been selected for the team despite his conviction for raping a 12-year-old British girl in 2014 when he was 19 and she was too young to consent, sparking a row that threatens to overshadow the start of the Paris Games.
The 29-year-old Dutchman will take to the sand on Sunday morning for his first beach volleyball match when the games get underway in the French capital this weekend.
However, her inclusion in the Dutch team has caused a huge controversy and her own national committee has had to take additional security measures, including preventing her from staying in the Olympic village with most of the rest of the country’s athletes and banning her from giving interviews to the media.
Despite his conviction, van de Velde has successfully rebuilt his life since leaving prison, to the point where he is now married to a well-known volleyball professional from Germany.
Steven van de Velde (right) is at the centre of controversy after being selected for the Olympics despite having been convicted of rape of a minor. He is now married to Kim Behrens (left).
Behrens (left), a police officer and athlete, dotes on her 1.98m husband and regularly posts loving content on social media about their life together.
Behrens, a glamorous athlete, regularly posts photographs on social media of her family, which includes her young son.
Kim Behrens and van de Velde married in 2022 and have a young son together.
Behrens, a police officer and athlete, adores her 6-foot-5 husband and regularly posts sentimental content on social media about their life together.
In December 2021, she wrote: “It’s probably time to officially announce it. Steven and I are having our baby in March.”
Then, in January 2022, they celebrated the New Year by getting married.
Behrens posted a series of photos from the wedding and wrote: ‘Mr. & Mrs. van de Velde. 01.01.2022 My year couldn’t have started better!’
After the baby was born, she once again doted on her husband, writing, “You and me! And now with him! I think I am witnessing pure happiness and love in life!”
He initially began talking to the girl after liking a photo of her on Facebook.
They began talking daily via Facebook, Snapchat and Skype before he arranged to visit her and got her on an EasyJet flight to Luton before arriving in her hometown of Milton Keynes on 2 August 2014.
The girl would later tell detectives that de Velde made her feel “special” and that he knew her true age.
The schoolgirl told her family she was staying with a friend before going to meet him in the city.
They tried to book a hotel room but after struggling to get one, they went to local beauty spot Furzton Lake, where they drank Baileys before the girl was sexually assaulted.
They then spent the night sleeping under cardboard boxes beneath a staircase at a Premier Inn.
Van de Velde and Behrens married in January 2022. He was released from prison in 2017, five years before their son was born.
Behrens is a police officer in her native Germany and also a professional volleyball player.
The next morning, when her family went out, she took him back to the family home, where he raped her in her sister’s bedroom.
He did not use contraceptives and advised her to take the morning-after pill.
It was her visit to a family planning clinic that alerted the authorities, who were called in because of the girl’s young age: she was about to turn 13.
A European arrest warrant has been issued for him on charges of child sexual abuse; otherwise he would have been training with the 2016 Olympic team.
The athlete was extradited to the UK and when the case went to court two years later, he admitted three charges of rape of a child.
Linda Strudwick, defending the defendant, insisted it had been a “spur of the moment decision” to fly to England and said van de Velde was not a “predatory young man”.
Aylesbury Crown Court heard his victim had subsequently self-harmed following the trauma of her encounter with him.
Judge Francis Sheridan even told van de Velde at the time: “Your hopes of representing your country are now a dream shattered.”
Professional volleyball player Van de Velde served only one year in prison despite pleading guilty to three counts of rape of a minor.
And his own defence lawyer, Linda Strudwick, also said: “He has lost a stellar sporting career and is being branded a rapist. It is clearly the end of his career.”
However, van de Velde, sentenced to four years in prison, was transferred from the UK to the Netherlands to serve the remainder of his sentence under a treaty between the two countries.
The treaty allowed his charges and sentence to be brought in line with Dutch law, meaning the rape charge was changed to “fornication,” which meant he was eligible for release in 2017, having served just one year of his original sentence.
Van de Velde said a year later: “I can’t take it back, so I’ll have to take the consequences. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
The NSPCC at the time condemned the decision, adding that her “lack of remorse and self-pity is shocking”.
As if to confirm this view, van de Velde said shortly after his release: “I have been branded a sexual monster, a paedophile. I am not, I am not really.”
Following his release, the Dutch Volleyball Association allowed him to continue his career as a beach volleyball player, culminating in the decision to allow him to go to Paris.
Vans de Velde’s German brother-in-law Kevin Behrens is also a sports star who plays football for Bundesliga leaders VfL Wolfsburg and has been capped by the German national team.