{"id":245102,"date":"2025-10-27T23:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245102\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T23:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:27:07","slug":"dutch-volleyballer-steven-van-de-velde-denied-visa-to-enter-australia-the-abc-understands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245102\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch volleyballer Steven van de Velde denied visa to enter Australia, the ABC understands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Convicted Dutch child rapist Steven van de Velde has been denied a visa to Australia to compete in the Beach Volleyball World Championships, the ABC understands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Van de Velde was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 after admitting to three counts of rape against a child who he had met on Facebook, with the incident taking place in August 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">He was released after serving 12 months of his sentence and resumed his volleyball career in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Van de Velde has since represented the Netherlands in multiple international tournaments and at the Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Earlier this month, the<a class=\"Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2025-10-15\/convicted-rapist-selected-to-compete-in-beach-volleyball-event\/105892968\" data-component=\"Link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> South Australian government wrote to the federal government,<\/a> urging it to ban him from entering Australia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;It is my view, and that of the South Australian government, that Mr Van de Velde should not be granted a visa,&#8221; Attorney-General Kyam Maher said in the letter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;This individual&#8217;s offending is utterly abhorrent, and we do not believe that foreign child sex offenders should be granted entry to this country.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">A petition on Change.org calling for the Dutch player to be denied entry to the country had gathered more than 4,100 signatures.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The Beach Volleyball World Championships are due to be held in Adelaide, starting on November 14.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Loading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Convicted Dutch child rapist Steven van de Velde has been denied a visa to Australia to compete in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3443,64,63,145811,145812,145814,145813,1124,85,145808,145809,22473,145810],"class_list":["post-245102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-adelaide","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beach-volleyball","tag-beach-volleyball-world-championships","tag-convicted-child-rapist","tag-dutch-volleyballer","tag-south-australia","tag-sports","tag-steven-van-de-velde","tag-van-de-velde","tag-visa","tag-volleyball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}