Amos Yee Charged for Child Porn in the US & Could Be Coming Back to S’pore

The last we heard of Amos Yee, he’s become a blogger because it seems like even social media platforms can’t handle his controversial posts online.

And we’re no longer talking about controversial online posts intending to wound the religious feelings.

Instead, the 21-year-old is now being on the Internet’s crosshairs for defending paedophiles.

He once posted a picture of a young-looking girl on his Twitter account with the caption “How does one not become a paedophile?” leading to the suspension of his account.

In fact, his YouTube channel and all social media accounts were all taken down because of this controversial view.

However, in the land of freedom and the powerful First Amendment, he hasn’t got into trouble with the authorities.

Until now.

How it Started

It all started with this Facebook post:

Melissa Chen is a Singaporean and works in the US. Back then, she was a strong advocate for Yee and even played a role in Yee’s asylum in the US.

But Yee being Yee, he started to turn his attention to pedophilia, and that was when Chen changed her stand. Back in 2017, she even said in Twitter that “he is on very shaky legal territory”.

Today, we get to know that he’s finally fallen off the cliff.

According to Chen, it all started more than a year ago when someone told Chen about Yee’s “alleged activity” to her. They took the case to the Department of Homeland Security and they’ve kept quiet about it, but today, a reporter from the Chicago Sun Times managed to find out what happened.

What Happened

Yee has been charged with solicitation and possession of child porn charges.

According to the report which Chen didn’t refute, it involved a 14-year-old girl.

Last year, Yee uploaded a YouTube video in which he said he “argued that even if he did sexually abuse a 14-year-old, it does not change that there is nothing immoral about pedophilia.”

But hey: that’s the Internet and it’s Amos Yee, so you can’t anyhowly charge anyone for anyhowly say anyhowly things. If not, Donald Trump would be banned from the Internet forever and no one would be using Twitter anymore.

What sparked off the whole legal issue is that the prosecutors obtained messages that Yee exchanged with the 14-year-old girl.

The messages were between April and July last year, and they included nude photos he requested and received from the girl.

What’s even scarier is that they include nude photos of himself that he sent to the girl.

Maybe he didn’t know she’s 14 years old?

Well, the Dee-Kosh-Style defence was shot down because in the messages, the girl has repeatedly brought up her age.

What’s even worse is that Yee apparently told her to remove her age from her profile on WhatsApp.

Reader Bao: WhatsApp got profile, and can show age one meh?

I’m confused, too.

Eventually, what happened was that the relationship soured and the girl reached out to a group “interested in exposing pedophiles.”

Yee was then arrested on Thursday (our yesterday) at his home.

Yee’s Defence

I’d love to start off with his defence, but you probably are interested in this instead: during the hearing, Amos tried to defend himself, but his lawyer, an assistant public defender (a lawyer for people who cannot afford a private lawyer to defend himself), has to repeatedly say this: “Do not open your mouth right now…Amos. Just keep your mouth shut.”

It’d have been fun to be there.

Yee’s defence is that he’s an internet troll—but that was shot down by the judge who said that the charges were more than an “online troll” who was “trying to get a rise out of someone.”

For now, Yee is held on a $1 million bail (he got meh?) and will be banned from using the Internet while he awaits trial.

And if convicted, his asylum status could be terminated, which could mean that a BMT sergeant might have to face him soon.

He’s expected to be back in court on 5 November 2020.

All About the Famous Amos

If you were old enough to comprehend complete sentences in 2015, you probably know who Amos Yee is.

Yee was a Singaporean blogger who shot to fame after he made a video criticizing the late Lee Kuan Yew after he died.

He was subsequently arrested on multiple charges and was sentenced to jail, though he only ended up serving 53 days in remand.

What’s unique about Yee is his accent, which sounds like a mix of American and Donald Duck.

He then fled to the US in 2016 when Trump was the President-Elect. He was detained immediately and was granted asylum in the US on 24 March 2017, but was only released from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in downtown Chicago on 26 September 2017.

Between 2017 to now, he’s been actively creating pro-pedophilia contents and had all his social media platforms removed. Heck, even his Patreon account has been removed.