Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde, who served time in prison after he was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl, won his second match at the Paris Olympics and received an even harsher reaction from the crowd on Wednesday than for his first match.
If he hasn’t shown genuine remorse than changes my stance.
Given what I had read on the matter I was under the impression he had shown remorse. Particularly the “biggest mistake of [his] life” remark.
True remorse would involve an apology to the victim. At least I think most people would think so.
I disagree with that. There’s no need to put the victim on the spot like that. True remorse definitely doesn’t involve rejecting culpability like that though.
How is making a public apology to the victim putting them on the spot? I would say that a public apology is almost literally the least he could do for her.
It means she has to decide if she’ll listen to it, when and how she’ll be able to process it, and whether she forgives him. All of that in public? Not a chance in hell I’d want my rapist to do that.
Only if people expected her to respond, which they wouldn’t. The press would not be clamoring to see if she accepted it. They haven’t even named her as far as I know, since she was a minor, so they wouldn’t be able to.
Because all of that would be true regardless of whether he apologized in public or in private.
I’ve never heard anyone take a stance against a public apology before. This is honestly a very strange stance.
It’s still just hanging there, over her head, even if nobody expects an answer.
Weird, most of the people I’ve talked to while witnessing public apologies agree that they’d feel awful to receive. I don’t really talk about it in other scenarios, so I don’t know how common it is.
Which would be just as true if he apologized in private.
I absolutely don’t suggest a private apology! He should just leave her the hell alone forever
Thread got removed for me, possibly because I swore, but I don’t think it’s productive for the victim unless they seek it out. It’s too easy to load it with double meaning and use it as an opportunity to hurt them further. The only way to avoid that would be to use boilerplate language that doesn’t mean anything.