Paula Radcliffe has apologised for wishing “good luck” to a convicted rapist who sexually assaulted a Milton Keynes girl in 2014, when he competes for the Netherlands at the Paris Olympics next week.
Four-time Olympian and BBC analyst, Paula Radcliffe, proposed that beach volleyball player, Steven van de Velde, who was found guilty of raping a 12-year-old girl in Milton Keynes when he was 19, should not face punishment again.
Steven van de Velde was born in The Hague, Netherlands. In 2016, Van de Velde plead guilty at Aylesbury Crown Court to three counts of child rape on a Milton Keynes 12-year-old girl.
After connecting with the teenager on Facebook, he took a plane to the UK in August 2014 and went to her Buckinghamshire house, where he sexually assaulted her. He also sexually assaulted her near Furzton Lake.
When asked about outright bans in the Olympics on the Andrew Marr Tonight show, Radcliffe said it was a "very dangerous line to go down."
Radcliffe told Marr, “I know that he is married now and has settled down. I think it’s a tough thing to do to punish him twice and if he’s managed to successfully turn his life around after being sent to prison and to qualify and to be playing sport at the highest level, then I actually wish him the best of luck.”
Following outrage and criticism of her comments, Radcliffe came out and said, “I agree and can only apologise, that isn’t what I intended to say. I stress that it isn’t something that can be excused in any way.”
“I was confused in my head and responding to the right to ban him from the Games and I don’t know why I wished him luck. Again I apologise”, she concluded.
