5 months' jail for man, 24, for taking upskirt videos at MRT stations of 10 women

SINGAPORE — Fuelled by a fetish for upskirt videos, Ang Yuan Jie committed 10 acts of taking such videos of women at various MRT train stations over a week, before getting caught red-handed by a station master.

On Monday (May 15), the 24-year-old Malaysian pleaded guilty to a charge of voyeurism and was sentenced to five months' jail.

Voyeurism is described as an intentional act to intrude on someone's privacy either by physically watching the person or using devices to record an image.

The female victim he filmed when he was caught cannot be named due to a court order to protect her identity.

WHAT HAPPENED

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Samuel Chew told the court on Monday that on May 24, 2022 at around 8.15am, Mr Ong Beng Kee, the SBS Transit station master who was on duty at Ubi MRT Station, noticed Ang loitering around the area. The station was along the Downtown Line.

He saw Ang follow the female victim, who was wearing a skirt, from behind as she got on an upward-moving escalator.

Ang then held his mobile phone underneath her skirt with the camera pointed upwards between her legs.

Upon seeing this, Mr Ong approached Ang and held on to his bag to prevent him from leaving. He also informed the victim of what happened and asked a colleague to call the police. 

Mr Ong asked Ang to hand over his mobile phone as well and he complied.

Once police officers arrived, Ang was arrested and a search was done on his mobile phone, which revealed 10 upskirt videos of 10 different women. 

The videos were dated between May 17 and 24 in 2022.

Ang admitted that he had intentionally and knowingly recorded these videos at various MRT stations and had done so because he had a "fetish" for upskirt videos. 

Seeking a lighter sentence on behalf of Ang, defence lawyer Cheryl Sim from Regent Law LLC disagreed with the prosecution that pre-meditation had been involved because Ang had done the act in the "spur of the moment" after seeing the female victim walk pass him. 

Ms Sim also urged the court to "exercise leniency" in sentencing Ang because this incident had taught him "a painful lesson".

Before District Judge Luke Tan delivered his sentence, Ang presented a one-page personal statement to address the court where he apologised for his "heinous" behaviour and said that he committed his acts to deal with his depression and anxiety.

The judge noted that it was Ang's first offence but he agreed with the prosecution that deterrence is warranted since there was a degree of pre-meditation from Ang, who had committed the offences within a week on 10 occasions with 10 different women who were successfully targeted.

For acts of voyeurism, Ang could have been jailed up to two years with a fine or been given caning, or both, and could have faced twice the amount of punishment under the Criminal Procedure Code.