SINGAPORE: Singaporean Amos Yee was on Thursday (Nov 20) released from a United States prison on parole.
Yee, now 27, was serving time at Danville Correctional Center in Illinois after being sentenced in 2021 to six years’ jail by a US court for possessing child pornography and grooming.
According to a victim’s information network, Yee had been released on Nov 7 and immediately taken back into custody.
He was then released again on Nov 20 at about 7.15am (9.15pm Singapore time).
Yee has been registered as a sex offender, according to checks on the Illinois State Police’s offender registry.
This is not the first time he has been released on parole.
In October 2023, Yee was granted parole halfway through his six-year sentence. But he was taken back into custody about a month later for violating parole conditions.
Yee was sentenced on Dec 3, 2021, after pleading guilty to grooming a 14-year-old girl online and asking her for naked pictures of herself.
Another 16 charges were dismissed as part of a plea deal that Yee agreed to, and his jail term was backdated to his arrest in October 2020.
The court heard previously that Yee, then 20, had befriended the victim in February 2019.
They began an “online courtship”, during which he repeatedly asked for her naked photos.
On occasions, he asked her to engage in roleplay and “sexual fantasies”, said the prosecution. This was despite the victim telling him that she was 14 years old, and it went on until July 2019.
The court heard that he had used WhatsApp to “seduce, solicit and lure” the victim, then distributed photographs of her online.
Yee was arrested by US marshals at his apartment in Chicago’s Norwood Park East neighbourhood.
It has been more than eight years since Yee was granted asylum by a US immigration court, despite opposition from the Department of Homeland Security.
In 2015, Yee was jailed in Singapore for wounding religious feelings by making remarks about Christians.
About a year later, Yee was jailed again and fined on a similar charge, this time for making remarks about Christians and Muslims.