Prosecution seeks 30 weeks’ jail for former Yale-NUS student caught filming female housemates in shower

SINGAPORE — Already expelled from Yale-NUS College for filming four of his female housemates showering in the common bathroom of their student dormitory, a 26-year-old man now faces jail time for his offences.

The former student, who cannot be named due to a court gag order to protect his victims’ identities, pleaded guilty earlier this month to eight charges of insulting a woman’s modesty. He had been in remand since then.

District Judge Adam Nakhoda will take 16 similar charges into consideration for sentencing on Feb 7, after he heard submissions on the appropriate punishment from the prosecution and defence on Friday (Jan 31).

The gag order was imposed last year after his lawyers argued that he and his victims came from a “very small cohort” and they could be identified if his name was made public.

As well as filming his housemates in the shower, the man also took upskirt videos of female students in Yale-NUS classrooms, but the victims could not be identified.

He stored some of the videos on his hard drive connected to his laptop, and many were automatically uploaded to his cloud storage account. He also rewatched them on his mobile phone “whenever he felt overwhelmed with schoolwork”, the court earlier heard.

He told investigators he had taken the shower videos because “it helped him to destress from his academic pressure”.

He stayed with five other female residents, four of whom were later identified by investigators as his victims.

They had individual bedrooms but shared a common toilet, living together between August 2017 and May 2018, and between January and March 3 last year.

Yale-NUS College announced a pilot in 2015 that allowed young men and women to live together in co-ed suites in order to give students more choices in housemates.

‘FALL FROM GRACE’ PUNISHMENT ENOUGH: LAWYERS

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Gabriel Lim sought 30 weeks’ jail, while the accused’s lawyers Josephus Tan and Cory Wong asked for 20 weeks instead.

The prosecutor said that the videos showed the victims’ faces, and that students are “entitled to safety and privacy accorded in what is their second home”.

“It goes without saying that students in classrooms are entitled to have ease of mind to focus on studying, instead of worrying if their fellow classmates are capturing their more intimate parts,” DPP Lim added.

Mr Tan argued that his client had the “strong support of a loving community”, including his fiancee and family.

“Notwithstanding his sexual wrongdoing, (the man’s) fiancee has stood by him all this time and she keenly awaits his return. They are also planning to hold their long-awaited wedding (later this year),” Mr Tan said.

Referencing the case of Monica Baey, who sparked a nationwide conversation about voyeurism on campus last year after being filmed showering in her National University of Singapore hostel toilet, Mr Tan said that there were many similarities between the two cases.

The lawyer also told the court that the man’s “fall from grace” alone represented significant punishment, and that he was remorseful for his actions.

Mr Tan revealed that he will begin working full-time at a labour supply company after he is released from jail.

LIED THAT IT WAS HIS FIRST TIME FILMING

The peeping tom was caught after trying unsuccessfully to deflect suspicion from himself when one of his housemates confronted him several times.

On the evening of March 3 last year, the housemate had returned to the suite with her boyfriend while the accused was revising his schoolwork in his room. The housemate then went to the shared toilet to shower.

After about five minutes, he entered the toilet and used his mobile phone and recorded her showering by placing his phone above the bathroom door.

However, the housemate spotted him and shouted for her boyfriend.

The accused went to a sofa and started to delete the video as well as all previous incriminating videos that he had taken. He also removed the back cover of his phone in a bid to avoid recognition.

When confronted by the housemate and her boyfriend, they found nothing incriminating in his phone. Feigning innocence, the accused suggested that another female housemate had just entered the suite, and urged the victim to make a report with the school.

He also suggested that the culprit could have been someone from a party on another floor. He went in search of the culprit with the housemate and her boyfriend, and was unsuccessful.

After that, the housemate reported the incident to the school, but was told that there were no closed-circuit television cameras installed in the suite or in the vicinity of their floor and staircases.

When the housemate confronted the accused once more, he again denied it. Before she left for the police station to make a report, the man arranged a gathering of some residents and confessed that he had been the one standing behind the bathroom door.

But he lied that it was the first time he had done such a thing, adding that he ultimately did not record any video of the housemate. Believing him, the housemate decided against going to the police.

Later, the housemate changed her mind and made a police report after the parents of both the housemate and the man met in a session organised by the church which they both attended.

Police were able to retrieve the video and found other incriminating evidence on his phone and laptop.