Given second chance by upskirt victim, voyeur continued filming in-laws, colleagues until caught again a year later

SINGAPORE — After getting away with taking upskirt videos at a shopping mall because the victim did not report him to the police, a Singaporean man continued committing voyeuristic acts on colleagues and his in-laws to alleviate stress, a court heard on Monday (March 14).

For more than a year until his arrest, he went back to filming up women’s skirts and secretly took videos of his female colleagues in the unisex toilet at their workplace. He also placed a pinhole camera in his in-laws’ home to film his wife’s sisters in the shower.

The man, now 31, pleaded guilty to three counts of insulting a woman’s modesty. Six other charges, including criminal trespass, will be taken into consideration for sentencing on April 12.

He cannot be named due to a gag order imposed by the courts to protect his victims’ identities.

District Judge Shaifuddin Saruwan called for a report to assess if he is suitable for a mandatory treatment order — a community sentencing option offered to offenders suffering from mental conditions that contributed to the offence. 

The prosecution had opposed this, seeking 16 to 20 weeks’ imprisonment and arguing that the accused’s adjustment disorder with depressed mood did not impair his ability to control his impulses.

FILMED FRIEND, NEIGHBOUR

The court heard that he started taking upskirt videos around December 2017. He did so at locations around Singapore like a Sheng Siong supermarket outlet, an MRT station and on public buses.

One victim was a friend from university who was in the same course as him. Court documents did not name the university.

Another victim was a woman who lived in the same public housing block. He had followed her to a bakery, pretended to drop his wallet there and used the opportunity to film under her skirt.

When examined by Dr Stephen Phang from the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), he told the psychiatrist that he realised doing this “helped to alleviate his subjective sense of stress and distress” and that he would do it “almost every day” on his breaks and commutes.

From 2018 to 2019, he also targeted his colleagues, following one into their workplace toilet and filming her relieving herself. He did this by placing his mobile phone under the partition separating their cubicles.

During investigations, he admitted that he could no longer remember the names of the colleagues he filmed. He also admitted to watching the videos in whichever cubicle he was in and masturbating.

In September 2018, a woman whom he did not know caught him trying to take an upskirt video of her at Tiong Bahru Plaza and confronted him. Ultimately, she did not report the matter to the police.

Following this incident, he then deleted all the voyeuristic videos from his mobile phone and transferred them to his laptop.

He then got married in October 2018 and visited his in-laws at their flat sometime that year, placing the pinhole camera — which was concealed within a pen — in their kitchen toilet. He hid the camera in a basket containing brushes and scrubs.

He filmed his sister-in-law, who is a year younger than him, relieving herself. He then retrieved the camera before leaving the flat.

On at least two other occasions, he took the device over to the flat again. On one such visit, he quickly hid it in the basket when he realised that his other sister-in-law was about to take a shower.

Shortly after, the two sisters entered the toilet to shower together.

When the device stopped working a few days later, he smashed it with a hammer and discarded it.

In March 2019, he began downloading upskirt videos from the sex-themed Sammyboy online forum and amassed at least 110 such clips. He also uploaded three of his own videos to the forum.

HOW HE WAS CAUGHT

His voyeuristic spate finally came to an end after one of his colleagues caught him filming her in the toilet on Dec 3, 2019. He had tailed her from their office to do so.

She was in a toilet cubicle when she saw a mobile phone extended through the gap under the partition. She took a photo of the phone before leaving the toilet and going back to their office.

When he also returned, he saw the victim walking into the conference room and assumed she was going to report the matter to his superiors. He then deleted all the obscene videos on his phone, the court heard.

The victim told their assistant general manager what she saw. The manager then looked through closed-circuit television footage and saw the accused entering and exiting the female toilet. She then lodged a police report.

Police officers arrived and he initially lied that he had needed to use the toilet urgently due to stomach issues. He eventually confessed and was arrested on the spot.

The police seized his electronic devices and found at least 16 upskirt videos that he had taken.

He was then examined by Dr Phang from IMH. The psychiatrist stated in his report that when the accused was caught in 2018 at Tiong Bahru Plaza, the accused said he “begged my way out of the situation”.

Dr Phang added that this did not inhibit or deter the accused from resuming his habit, which he said “came back shortly after getting married because I still didn’t know how to cope with stress”.

The psychiatrist wrote that the accused felt a general sense of anticipation before taking upskirt videos to "get this quickly, so I can flee to the nearest toilet and masturbate".

Dr Phang also assessed that he was cognisant of both the nature and wrongfulness of his actions.

Under the Penal Code, those convicted of insulting a woman's modesty can be jailed for up to a year or fined, or be punished with both.