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It has no impact on him competing - he can go compete at his local community gym - it impacts him representing his country on the largest stage possible.
Same thing, though. His punishment was carried out. Presumably his country deemed that punishment sufficient for the nature of his crimes.
What crimes are so heinous as to disqualify someone from 'representing his country,' assuming they're otherwise talented enough to hack it?
Do we agree that Michael Phelps' kerfuffle over Marijuana use doesn't invalidate his gold medal wins, nor should he be prevented from competing?
So light drug use is 'acceptable.'
I'll grant murder is beyond the pale.
I think I'd be fine with a person with a single DUI on their record representing the U.S. I'd be okay with someone convicted of 'simple' assault and battery too, assuming they had history of good behavior since then.
Sexual Assault is beyond simple assault, but I think I can be okay with someone convicted of sexual assault representing the country if it is 10 years after the fact.
Since the OP says the crime was committed
I guess I'm just left wondering how much harsher to judge when the victim is 12.
My own thoughts on the crime of rape are nuanced, because the law treats it very differently from most other crimes, and nowadays doesn't even need to prove the perp's intent to stick.
On the one hand raping a child should be punished heavily. On the other I definitely don't see the benefit of continuing to drop sanctions on the perp once their sentence is done. I'd certainly argue that every consecutive year of demonstrably good behavior is grounds for easing up on him.
"Having sex with a child forever stains your reputation such that you can never be given any position of esteem or honor ever again"
is a pretty simple rule and certainly isn't the worst way to govern these things, but preventing someone with actual skills from using those skills to their fullest extent also creates economic deadweight loss. Maybe the answer is to legally enslave him and FORCE him to play Volleyball for the country, but he has to look like he's really unhappy about it, maybe they send someone out there to hit him with electrical shocks between rounds. But oh, fielding slave athletes is also a bad look for your country.
Hmm.
I don't want to seem flippant about it, but picking an athlete to represent my country has so little effect on my daily life, or anyone's, that I simply can't find it hugely controversial that they've got some nasty history. Like I said, keep him away from kids, and that's the sum total of my concern for the situation. Most Olympians ain't kids.
I hold people who are put in positions where they exercise actual authority over others (Politicians, CEOs, and the like) or in direct positions of trust to a much higher standard in this regard.
And that is their right. I tend to fall more on the American normie side of "maybe people who fuck 12 year-olds don't need to be around".
And no, I wouldn't apply it to marijuana. I'm not sure where the line is.
We suffer this loss all the time. Plenty of people are talented. Kevin Spacey has literally been found innocent in multiple trials and will still likely not be allowed to climb back to anything like his peak status. Ryan Garcia is currently in the doghouse. Poor Kyrie Irving was suspended for moronic conspiracy theories of the sort you hear yelled in the subway, no threat to anyone. He wasn't even allowed to pay jizya at first because he was not sufficiently deferential in his apologies.
Most people don't really care about any of these things on a deep level (unless your team lost out), yet it's not in doubt that this is the status quo. We don't really need to craft some justification for it from first principles like it's novel.
None of these high status roles are pure meritocracies. There's always been a debate about just who deserves to get these benefits (enhanced by the stage and national quality of the Olympics). Perhaps the one bit of crystal clear consensus is that something like race shouldn't be a barrier. The rest is debated constantly.
Yes that's the easy rule. I somehow feel like nobody is quite prepared to apply it to every single imagineable case, however.
Yes so you see my point.
If the rule is "having sex with a 12 year old is an instant social death sentence, and maybe a literal death sentence" then there's some incentive to use this claim as a bludgeon and create false allegations.
I don't know if there's a better equilibrium achievable, but I'd perhaps like to search for it.
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I'd be interested to see court documents to understand exactly what "no additional elements of coercion" means. Depending on context that can mean anything from 'didn't drug or threaten her life' to 'was completely unconscious at the time of the incident', and usually law and judicial contexts care about where it's enough to count as aggravating convictions. The Times summary, for however much you trust it, looks closer to the former than I'd like, especially with the "They also drank Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur together and slept on a cardboard box under a hotel stairway when they couldn’t get a room".
His defenders argue that because he was not convicted of grooming, he didn't do that, but even in the highly unlikely situation he didn't groom her in the colloquial sense, it seems very likely he fit in the text of the statute, so it's hard to pull too much data out of it. I've got... less than favorable feelings about the 'it's-ephebophilia' side of libertarian thought, but depending on the behavior this could well have flunked even that.
"Not all forms of being attracted to minors are pedophilia. If you like preteens it's called hebephilia. If you like teens it's called ephebephilia. The reason you don't hear people make this sort of distinction very often is because it kinda makes you sound like a pedophile." - Some comedian paraphrased.
Personally I'm in the "why do you call your pedophile chipper a wood chipper?" camp on the matter (at least for a case involving a 12-year-old), but even for an older teen (and even one actively sneaking out to hook up with older men) I think we need to bring back shotgun weddings. Unfortunately that's a bit of a coup complete problem and requires some major societal shifts back to enforcing social norms by both shame and force.
Marrying older teens is illegal in the Netherlands even if she’s pregnant. This isn’t Georgia(USA).
Hence it being a coup complete problem
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