U.S. Youth Is Caned; Doctor Says He’s OK

After two months of anguished, international debate about crime and effective punishment, American teen-ager Michael P. Fay was lashed with four strokes of a rattan cane in a prison here Thursday for the crime of spraying paint on cars.

Although widely expected since Fay’s clemency appeal was turned down Wednesday, the execution of his sentence provoked outrage from his parents, and the State Department called in S. R. Nathan, the Singaporean ambassador to Washington, to express its displeasure.

“I think it was a mistake,” President Clinton told reporters in a brief appearance in the Rose Garden, “not only because of the nature of the punishment related to the crime but because of the questions that were raised about whether the young man was in fact guilty and involuntarily confessed.”

A brief statement by Singapore’s penal department said 10 inmates, including Fay, were caned at the Queenstown Remand Prison on Thursday afternoon.

The statement said Fay, an 18-year-old high school senior from Dayton, Ohio, received four strokes of the four-foot cane.

“He was examined by a prison doctor after the caning and found to be in satisfactory condition,” the statement said.

The Fay case has drawn extraordinary interest worldwide, becoming the subject of countless talk shows and newspaper editorials fueled by rising concern in the West about crime and the best way to control it.

Thousands of Americans wrote to the Singaporean government urging it to go ahead with the punishment, and Fay unwittingly became a symbol of a culture clash between East and West.

In an extraordinary attempt at compromise, the normally unyielding government announced that the Cabinet had ordered President Ong Teng Cheong to reduce Fay’s original caning sentence from six strokes to four as a goodwill gesture to the United States. Fay is also serving a four-month jail sentence and has paid a $2,230 fine.

Although the flogging was carried out in private, a description published by the government on Sunday said Fay would be strapped to a wooden trestle and his back covered with pads to prevent damage to the kidneys and spine.

The State Department has contended that caning leaves permanent scars and is an “excessive penalty” for a youthful first offender in a case where the cars were not permanently damaged.

It also maintained that Fay received unusually harsh treatment because Singapore’s vandalism laws were never used in a case involving private property before.

“All they have accomplished is to show how petty and narrow-minded a dictatorship they are,” said George Fay, the youth’s father, in the Dayton suburb of Kettering. “This reinforces my resolve to fight them and prevent others going through the same process.”

Fay’s mother, Randy Chan, who lives in Singapore with her second husband, an executive at a courier company, said she was too overcome to comment.

The sentence was carried out after a visit Thursday afternoon by Fay’s Singapore lawyers, who told reporters at the prison that he had no idea when he would be caned.

“He appeared nervous, agitated,” said Dominick Nagulendran, a member of his defense team. “He said, ‘Tell everybody I’ll be home soon.’ ”

With time off for good behavior, Fay could be released from jail as early as June 21.

Many of the facts of the case are still shrouded in controversy. Fay admitted in court that he had spray-painted 18 cars. But his father released a document written five months earlier in which the youth claimed that he was innocent and confessed only after being slapped, punched and threatened by police during nine days of interrogation.

Another youth, a Hong Kong national, has been sentenced to eight months in jail and 12 strokes of the cane for his part in the case. A Malaysian youth who was under age 16 at the time of the vandalism has been sent to a reform school for two months.

Another American, Stephen Freehill, and another Malaysian still face trial in the case. But a report in the government-controlled Singapore press on Thursday suggested that the vandalism charges--with their possibility of caning--might be reviewed because of a lack of witnesses.

Fay’s parents had argued that he should be spared caning because he suffers from attention deficit disorder, which his doctors said might lead him to despair and even contemplate suicide if he is caned.

Times staff writer John M. Broder in Washington contributed to this report.