Jail for man who planted pinhole camera in ex-girlfriend’s room after he suspected her of cheating on him

SINGAPORE — He was planning to marry his girlfriend, before seeing closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera footage of her letting another man into their home.

They broke up and he moved out, but he then installed a pinhole camera in the room they used to share and where she continued to live, to determine if his suspicions of her infidelity were true.

He ended up recording several videos of her nude.

The 48-year-old man, who is from China, was jailed for eight weeks on Tuesday (July 5) after pleading guilty to one count of insulting a woman’s modesty. Two other charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

He cannot be named due to a court order to protect the identity of his ex-girlfriend, a 40-year-old fellow China national.

The court heard that they previously lived in a flat in the Farrer Park area.

The man's lawyer Chung Ting Fai told the court that the couple met around 2012. They occupied one of the rooms in the flat and sub-letted the other partitioned room.

They installed a CCTV outside the flat in order to surveil it when they were not home.

He had plans to take his girlfriend’s hand in marriage and they even travelled back to China to meet each other’s parents, Mr Chung said.

The lawyer added: “However, in an unforeseen incident, when our client was viewing the CCTV footage, he discovered that the victim had brought another man into their home and spent a substantial period of time with the man in one of the rooms.

“Prior to this, our client was not aware of or informed by the victim that she would be bringing another man home.”

The accused then apparently confronted his girlfriend but she firmly denied the allegation, leading him to “feel greatly saddened and jealous”, Mr Chung said.

He “felt betrayed that the victim would bring another man into their home in complete disregard for their close-knit relationship cultivated over the seven years in which they have been staying together”, the lawyer added.

The couple broke up in September 2019 and he moved out of their room. However, he could still access it because he had the password to its lock.

The following month, he hid a pinhole camera among luggage placed in the room. The camera was covered by a black sheet that she used to keep dust off the luggage.

She discovered the camera on Nov 15 that year when she was about to pack some items to move out. She immediately switched off the camera’s power supply and used her friend’s phone to view what the camera had recorded.

She then realised that it had captured several videos of her nude.

Mr Chung, who sought four weeks’ jail, told the court that his client had “acted on his emotions” and wanted to ascertain if his ex-girlfriend was indeed bringing another man home.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Ng Shao Yan asked for two months’ jail, noting that offenders in similar cases have been sentenced to around three months’ jail. The prosecutor added that he had calibrated the proposed sentence downwards because of the man's plea of guilt and motive.

District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt told the court that notwithstanding the man's motive, it was “nonetheless an intrusion of privacy”.

If he had uploaded the video recordings online, he would face more serious charges and a higher sentence, the judge cautioned.

For insulting the modesty of a woman, the man could have been jailed for up to a year or fined, or both.

The offence has been repealed since Jan 1, 2020 after amendments to the Penal Code were passed in Parliament. It was replaced with the offence of voyeurism, which carries a higher maximum jail term of two years.