Man took hundreds of upskirt and toilet videos over 13 years, including of minors in church

SINGAPORE — Armed with a variety of devices to film unsuspecting women, such as spy watches and a spy clock, a married man got away with his crimes for 13 years before his colleague caught him in the act.

He saved the obscene video files with prefixes in order to find them more easily, such as “church”, “family” and “cotton on”.

On Monday (Feb 17), the 35-year-old man pleaded guilty in a district court to four counts of insulting a woman’s modesty. Nine other such charges will be taken into consideration for sentencing on March 23.

He cannot be named due to a gag order to protect the victims’ identities.

The prosecution is seeking three years’ jail, saying the case was “rather unprecedented”. District Judge Adam Nakhoda gave both parties time to file written sentencing submissions in light of that.

The court heard that the man struck from 2003 to April 2016, and his hard drive had almost 700 obscene videos and 821 photographs in it when he was finally caught.

Aside from taking upskirt videos, he filmed women changing their clothes, relieving themselves in a toilet, or showering. He knew some of them from various social circles.

He used the following devices:

• Six cameras

• Five spy watches

• Two spy pens

• Three spy camera sticks

• One spy clock

He bought all of them online or from Sim Lim Square. They were all disguised as their respective innocuous household counterparts but had a video recording function.

HAD 13 HARD DRIVES AND 4 HARD DISKS

He struck at locations such as changing rooms at Cotton On outlets, the toilet in his own home, and the toilet of his church. Some of his church victims were prepubescent minors.

He even took videos of a bride and bridesmaids changing their clothes in an unknown hotel room in 2013.

He either used his mobile phone to take the videos, or hid a camera in the toilet and left it there on video recording mode.

Based on the length of the footage he got, he used software to extract the relevant portions capturing the victims naked. He would then save the files of victims he deemed “attractive or acceptable” into a corresponding folder on his hard drive.

The authorities seized 13 hard drives, four internal hard disks and his mobile phone from him when he was arrested.

He saved video files of the same victim in a common folder, with a set naming convention containing a prefix and suffix. The prefixes referred to where he took the videos, such as “family”.

If he personally knew the victim, he would also give the folder a suffix that corresponded to their actual names or identities. If not, he used descriptions of their physical looks or their clothing.

He took screenshots of some of the videos as well, saving them in the same subfolder as a highlight of the full video clips.

The court further heard that he struck at least 306 times in 2011, at least 231 times in 2012, and at least 335 times in 2013.

HOW HE GOT NABBED

On April 13, 2016, he targeted one of his 19-year-old colleagues, who was trying on a new dress in their workplace toilet. Another colleague had just given it to her as a birthday present.

He followed her, went to the back of the toilet and started to film her through the window. She noticed his phone and tried to snatch it away, but he pulled his hand back and fled.

As he ran away, she looked through the window and recognised him. She told their other colleagues about what had happened.

He went to a nearby shop and deleted the video footage, then returned to the workplace and feigned ignorance, claiming he had left to buy a drink with two other male colleagues.

The victim lodged a police report the next day. About a week later, when police officers came to investigate the complaint, he lied again that he had not filmed the victim.

Closed-circuit television footage, along with interviews with the two male colleagues, soon exposed his lies.

During the interview with the police, the investigation officer grew suspicious by the man’s internet browsing history on his mobile phone.

He had searched for how to delete documents from that particular phone model, and the phone contained only a few photos, even though he had downloaded multiple photo and video editing apps.

Because of this, the police raided his home later that day.