He was the American teenager who was arrested for vandalism in Singapore in 1994 and sentenced to be caned 12 times. Then-president Bill Clinton asked for leniency or clemency and Fay’s sentence was reduced, however he still received 4 strokes.
There is an entire “spanking” subculture which seemed very interested in this case and Singapore caning in general. There are people who are into this, and in one case a spanking fetishist even paid $100 to be caned by the same guy who caned Fay (see the references section). The phrase “Michael Fay” appears in the meta tags of a lot of “spanking” and fetish websites. As for Fay himself, he returned home to the United States, living in Ohio with his mother. He moved to Florida in 1995 for a job at Universal Studios and attended college in Orlando. In 1998 he pled guilty to possession of marijuana and paid a $500 fine. At least two books have been written about the incident. There was talk of him shopping the “movie rights” to his story but nothing seems to have happened (file it next to the Jessica Lynch blockbuster…)
