‘Truly perverse’: Voyeur jailed 7 weeks for filming female colleague using the toilet

SINGAPORE — A 28-year-old engaged man who filmed a female colleague relieving herself in a women’s toilet was sentenced to seven weeks’ jail on Thursday (Nov 12).

Gabriel Lim Wei Hng, whose fiancee was present in the district court, pleaded guilty to one count each of insulting the modesty of a woman and criminal trespass.

Four other charges, relating to similar offences he had previously committed at the same toilet, were taken into consideration during sentencing.

The court heard that Lim had entered the toilet to film the victim with his mobile phone on July 18 last year. The victim, 25, but cannot be named due to a court order protecting her identity. 

They both worked in the same office building.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Lim Shin Hui said that Lim, a business administration executive, had “wanted to take a video of a female using the toilet” when he heard voices while he was in the adjacent men's toilet.

He went to the toilet cubicle closest to the entrance and filmed the victim with his mobile phone from above the cubicle door while the woman was in a state of undress and relieving herself.

The victim noticed the phone and shouted, causing Lim to panic. He returned to the men’s toilet to delete the footage before he went back to his office.

Lim was later arrested after the victim and another witness who was in the toilet at that time reviewed surveillance footage showing the corridor outside the toilet. They recognised Lim as a fellow employee.

In mitigation, his defence counsel Favian Kang said that Lim, who studied at the Singapore Institute of Management, does not make any excuses for his actions and fully admits his wrongdoing.

Lim’s crime was done in the “spur of the moment”, Mr Kang of law firm Peter Low and Choo said. He added that Lim had voluntarily sought psychotherapy and counselling at the Institute of Mental Health before he was charged.

Mr Kang also said that the offence had a lower degree of intrusion, compared to the past cases relied on by the prosecution, as the video clip was taken from the top of the cubicle and not from under the partition of the cubicle.

District Judge Marvin Bay, however, said he was not convinced that there was a valid distinction to be made over the way the video clip was taken.

Calling it a “truly perverse and egregious” crime, he noted that Lim had sought to cover his tracks by deleting the video.

District Judge Bay added that the multiple similar charges against Lim demonstrate that Lim had more of an “established” and “premeditated” modus operandi rather than having committed the act out of impulse.

Lim will start serving his sentence from Dec 14.