NUS student gets more charges of filming women showering in hostel toilet, taking upskirt videos off campus

SINGAPORE — Already accused of filming a female student showering in a residential hall bathroom, a National University of Singapore (NUS) student was handed nine fresh similar charges on Wednesday (Dec 18).

Joel Rasis Ismail’s new charges allege that he trespassed in a women’s bathroom at Kuok Foundation House — a building in the university’s Raffles Hall — to film three more unknown female students showering there, sometime in March this year.

He is now also accused of taking upskirt videos at an architecture firm and at Tanjong Pagar MRT Station.

He previously said in an online resume that he was a “budding architect”.

The 26-year-old was first hauled to court in May, when he was given one charge each of trespassing in the hostel bathroom on May 11 and insulting the female student’s modesty by taking a video of her showering.

Joel was also a resident of Raffles Hall. He purportedly tried to avoid detection by changing his attire immediately afterwards, but the police arrested him later that day with the help of closed-circuit television footage.

Beyond the university, he is said to have committed more offences in 2016 by:

• Taking two upskirt videos of a woman on June 2 that year, while she was in the office of the architecture firm.

• Taking an upskirt video of an unknown woman going up the escalator. He allegedly did this on two occasions — May 24 and June 6, 2016.

Joel will return to court in January next year and remains out on bail of S$10,000.

If convicted of insulting the modesty of a woman, he could be jailed for up to a year and fined for each charge. If convicted of criminal trespass, he could be jailed for up to three months and fined up to S$1,500.

His initial arrest came on the heels of a nationwide conversation about voyeurism on university campuses, after NUS undergraduate Monica Baey took to Instagram to talk about being filmed showering in a university hall last November.

In response to queries from TODAY, an NUS spokesperson said the university had convened a board of discipline in June. Joel had been suspended for three semesters and received mandatory counselling and rehabilitation sessions, which would all form part of his educational record.

The spokesperson added that if the court proceedings raised further matters in relation to Joel, NUS would look at convening a new board of discipline to look into this.

Earlier this month, another NUS student — 25-year-old Ryan You Jun Chao — was similarly charged with trespassing in a women’s toilet at a residential hall on two occasions earlier this year, in order to take photos of female students showering.