'Worst of the worst': Will Amos Yee be prosecuted in S'pore for his crimes in the US?

Amos Yee’s return to Singapore sees a man once regarded as an enfant terrible, now a criminal in two countries.

Yee, now 27, is facing three charges for failing to report for medical screening under the Enlistment Act, and is currently out on a S$10,000 bail.

What did Yee do?

Yee has spent around four years in prison, 10 weeks in Singapore about 10 years ago in two different stints, for wounding religious feelings and for insulting Christianity and the late Lee.

He would eventually flee to exile in the United States, but found himself in trouble with the law there after it was discovered that he had been exchanging nude photographs with a 14-year-old girl while he was 21.

For those offences, and offences around his breaching of parole conditions, he was imprisoned in the U.S. for nearly four years.

He would be caught up in the anti-immigrant whirlwind of U.S. President Donald Trump, and would be one of a handful of Singaporeans named as the “worst of the worst” by the FBI, and would eventually be deported from the U.S., despite a desperate plea/threat to/against the Singapore government to not let him back into the country.

While his crimes in Singapore were subject to some local and international debate at the time about whether it was appropriate to jail him, his U.S. crimes are much less ambiguous.

Even his former sponsor and advocate, Melissa Chen, has since disavowed him, probably not helped by his insistence on not only admitting to his crimes but naming himself as a pedophilia supporter, in addition to his supposed advocacy of freedom of speech.

Previous convictions

But Yee’s return and release have sparked a question about how the Singapore government should treat him regarding his U.S. crimes, and whether his previous convictions would play any part in legal proceedings.

As reported in 2021 by The Straits Times, Yee was arrested in Oct. 2021, having exchanged nudes with a 14-year-old girl, as well as requesting that they engage in role play and sexual fantasies despite Yee knowing that she was 14 at the time.

Mothership spoke with Suang Wijaya, managing director of Eugene Thuraisingam Asia LLC, about whether Yee would face criminal action again over his sex crime convictions.

Suang said that it is unlikely that Yee will be liable for a criminal offence, based on the sexual offences being committed in the United States.

He explained that under Singapore’s legal system, criminal offences do not have extraterritorial effect, except if the law specifies otherwise.

In this regard, he gave the example of laws stating that drug consumption overseas by Singaporeans constituted an offence in Singapore, even though the offence was committed overseas.

Because those Yee’s sex crime offences took place overseas, they do not amount to offences in Singapore.

But Suang said it is possible that these offences “partially influenced the Court's granting of the bail amount of S$10,000”, and that the court may have taken into account his offences overseas when considering he might commit criminal offences while out on bail.

If the acts had been committed while Yee was in Singapore, he would have come up against a strengthened anti-child grooming law, which came into effect in January 2020.

A broader question remains about Yee’s advocacy of pedophilia.

Yee has written several times in his online blog that he believes that what he terms “consensual” sexual relationships between minors and adults are not only harmless, but beneficial.

Suang shared that as long as his “speech acts were done when he was physically in the U.S.” it did not constitute an offence in Singapore.

However, since his release on bail, Yee has continued to blog, noting that his support for pedophilia was “non-negotiable”, although it does not appear that advocacy alone constitutes a crime.

Registry

But it does lead to a final question: should there be a Singapore Sex Offender registry, and should Yee be on it?

The simple fact is that Singapore does not have a sex offender registry, and when asked about it, Suang said that such a list had advantages and disadvantages.

On one hand, the registry might act as a deterrent against persons committing sexual offences, but on the other, “such a list may result in disproportionate stigma to, say, a young first-time offender who otherwise has excellent prospects of rehabilitation.”

Note, he did not say that such a list would help prevent offences, a view that has become far more contentious in recent years.

As early as 2016, journalist and policy analyst Dara Lind wrote in Vox about the questionable goals and methodology that gave rise to such registries in the U.S., and their problematic results.

Of her many critiques, one was simply that such registries ended up as a way to punish offenders rather than fulfil their initial purpose, which was ostensibly to protect children and potential victims.

Evasive behaviour

So it appears that for the moment, Yee’s main legal concern will remain his NS evasion, rather than any particular sexual offences he has committed or advocated for.

Despite his pronouncements that he has returned to be an activist in Singapore, the establishment that Yee abhors does not appear to be too worried.

When appearing on the podcast of comedian Rishi Budhrani, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs K Shanmugam described Yee as “just a boy with very bad behaviour”.

Yee is due back in court later this month.

Top image via Amos Yee/YouTube