Amos Yee Pleads Not Guilty to Child Porn; To Appear in Court on 18 Dec

By
Shawn Ambrose
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If you don’t know who Amos Yee is, you probably don’t know what a polocle is.

And you don’t know what a polocle is because it’s a word that Amos Yee made up.

An explanation of the word will tell you all you need to know about the 20-year-old.

Yee calls himself a “Polocle”, which is a portmanteau of the words ‘Polymath’ and ‘Oracle’.

As Yee says: “Polymath” means a person whose knowledge spans a wide variety of subjects, and “Oracle”, meaning a giver of truth.

And you thought Donald Trump loved himself.

Yee was recently indicted in the US on child pornography charges, but even though there’s a mountain of evidence, he’s denied the allegations.

Amos Yee Pleads Not Guilty to Child Porn; To Appear in Court on 18 Dec

The Singaporean blogger pleaded not guilty to all charges related to his arrest for child pornography on Tuesday (24 Nov).

Yee entered his plea in a Chicago court, three weeks after a grand injury formally indicted him.

He’s been in Chicago’s Cook County jail and the bail has been set at US$1 million, probably a little higher than he would have liked.

Yee was represented in court by a public defender (a lawyer for people who cannot afford a private lawyer to defend them), and is due to return to court on 18 Dec.

Warning Signs

It was pretty clear long before he was charged that Yee didn’t see anything wrong with paedophilia.

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.

And in his new blog Polocle, Yee also has a page titled “Why We Should Defend Paedophiles”.

This is the reason his YouTube channel and social media accounts were taken down.

You can’t arrest someone for making controversial statements about paedophilia, of course.

You can, however, arrest them if they exchange nude photos with a 14-year-old girl.

What Happened

Yee was charged with child pornography and grooming after he allegedly exchanged nude photos and “thousands” of messages with a 14-year-old girl while living in Chicago.

Not only did he send her nude photos, he asked for nude photos of the girl, and got them.

And Yee couldn’t claim to have been unaware of her age, as she repeatedly brought it up during the conversation.

Eventually, their relationship soured  and the girl reached out to a group “interested in exposing pedophiles.”

So, what was Yee’s defence?

Just an Internet Troll

Yee’s defence was that he was just an internet troll, doing controversial things for controversy’s sake.

However, this defence was quickly shot down by the judge, who said the charges were more than an “online troll” who was “trying to get a rise out of someone.”

Yee’s lawyer is also having a rather tough time, as he’s literally had to tell the 20-year-old to “keep your mouth shut” because Yee tried to defend himself in court.

Arrested in Singapore For Wounding Religious Feelings

Before Yee was arrested in the US, he got into trouble in Singapore for wounding religious feelings.

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

He’s mostly known in Singapore for criticizing the late Lee Kuan Yew after he died.

In 2016, he fled to the US 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 Chicago on 26 September 2017.

If Yee’s convicted in the US, his asylum status could be terminated, which means he’d have to return to sunny Singapore and sing Why Must We Serve?

Featured Image: Image: Cook County Sheriff’s Office & Twitter

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Shawn Ambrose
Email: [email protected]