Dutch volleyball player who was imprisoned for raping a 12-year-old British girl she met on Facebook has qualified to compete in the Paris Olympics

A Dutch volleyball player who was jailed for raping a 12-year-old girl has qualified to compete in next month’s Olympic Games in Paris.

Steven van de Velde was 19 when he flew from the Netherlands to the UK to meet the schoolgirl in August 2014. The two had chatted on Facebook before taking her virginity.

The athlete, who knew how young the girl was at the time, was sentenced to four years in prison in March 2016 after admitting three counts of rape.

But although the judge at the time described Van de Velde’s promising career as a “shattered dream”, the volleyball player is on the verge of returning to the spotlight after securing his place at the Paris Games in July.

The 29-year-old has qualified for the national pairing with his partner Matthew Immers, which is now the eleventh-placed team in the world rankings, according to The Telegraph.

During his trial almost a decade ago, Aylesbury Crown Court heard that van de Velde had travelled to the UK, met his victim and had sex with her.

Sandra Beck, the prosecutor, told the court at the time: “She described how she had met Steven Van de Velde through Facebook, how they spoke to each other regularly through Facebook and how he made her feel special.”

“She made it clear that she was seven years younger than him. This relationship via social media lasted for a while.”

The volleyball player’s victim had added him as a friend on Facebook after he made a positive comment on one of her photos, the court heard.

They began communicating daily via Facebook, Snapchat and Skype before he arranged to visit her and arrived in Milton Keynes in August 2014.

The student told her family that she was staying with a friend and sneaked out to try to book a hotel with the older teenager, who was 19 at the time.

When they couldn’t find a room, they went to Furzton Lake in town, where they drank Baileys and she performed a sexual act on him.

The next day, the couple slept in cardboard boxes under the stairs at the Premier Inn, having once again been denied a room. She took him to her empty house and he took her virginity.

Before returning to the Netherlands, Van de Velde advised her to take the morning-after pill since they had not used contraception. Her visit to a family planning clinic alerted the authorities, who intervened because of the girl’s young age.

The sportsman from Westeinde, 46, Voorburg, Netherlands, was extradited to the United Kingdom on January 8, where he was arrested on suspicion of sexual conduct. He later admitted three counts of rape of a child.

Van de Velde was released from prison in 2017 after serving only one year of his four-year sentence.

After his release, he said: “I want to correct all the nonsense that was written about me while I was incarcerated.”

“I didn’t read it on purpose, but I understand that it was pretty bad that I was branded a sex monster, a pedophile. I’m not that, really not.”

“Everyone can have their opinion about me, but it’s only fair that they also know my side of the story.”