18 weeks' jail, caning for father who used spy camera to film 13-year-old daughter changing clothes

SINGAPORE — After buying a spy camera disguised as a USB charger, a man fixed the device in his 13-year-old daughter’s bedroom and recorded a few video clips of her changing into her school uniform.

His wife then lodged a police report several days after finding the obscene footage on his laptop.

When the authorities began investigating, he denied the allegations and claimed he had installed the spy camera to monitor his daughter’s studies.

On Wednesday (April 20), the 43-year-old was sentenced to 18 weeks’ jail and one stroke of the cane for his actions from 2019 to 2020. His jail sentence was backdated to April 1 when he was remanded.

The Indian national had pleaded guilty last month to two voyeurism charges. District Judge Chee Min Ping took into consideration another voyeurism charge for sentencing purposes.

He cannot be named due to a gag order to protect the identity of his daughter, who is now aged 15 and in secondary school. Court papers did not state his occupation.

The court heard that around July 2019, he bought the spy camera to “covertly view the victim changing privately in her bedroom”. The camera had a signal emitter that allowed it to transmit real-time footage to mobile devices linked to it within a certain radius.

This allowed the device users to record the footage on the devices.

On three consecutive days in 2020 — July 5, 6 and 7 — he went into his daughter’s bedroom to plant the camera in a corner, adjusting it to face her laundry basket.

He knew that she needed to change into her school uniform to go to school.

After activating the device, he pulled up an application on his mobile phone that allowed him to view the real-time footage. He ensured that the video feed was stable, adjusted the camera slightly and left the room.

His actions were captured in the recorded footage.

When his daughter changed into her school uniform and left home, he returned to retrieve the spy camera and transferred the footage to his laptop and mobile phone, viewing it for his own pleasure.

On Aug 21 that year, his wife — a 36-year-old fellow Indian national — filed a police report.

She said that while using her husband’s Dell laptop, she discovered that he had recorded and stored private videos of their child in various states of undress.

The housewife reported that he had installed spy cameras in the common bathroom and their daughter’s bedroom.

Investigations revealed that out of the 155 video clips that she discovered, most of them — apart from the three taken of the girl — were short ones he had taken with a camera placed below a sink facing the toilet bowl.

Those convicted of voyeurism against a minor under 14 can be jailed for up to two years and fined or caned.