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Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book is collecting petition signatures to pressure the International Olympic Committee to ban convicted pedophiles from participating in the Olympic Games.
The reason: Steven van de Velde, a 29-year-old volleyball player who served prison time for having sex with a 12-year-old when he was 19, has been allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics.
Book, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who founded Lauren’s Kids to combat the crime, said “we must send a clear and unequivocal message that child sexual abuse is intolerable and will be met with the utmost consequences.”
“The world is watching.”
– Jesse Scheckner, Florida Politics