Two students in court for peeping at women in NUS and NTU toilets in separate cases

SINGAPORE — Two students pleaded guilty in court on Thursday (Feb 27) to preying on female university undergraduates in separate incidents last year.

Zachary Lim Yong Hao, 18, was a junior college student when he peeped at female students in the women’s toilet at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) University Town (UTown).

The other offender, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) engineering undergraduate Phan Nguyen Tuan Anh, filmed a female student showering in a residential hostel toilet.

The court on Thursday called for a report to assess if Lim was suitable for probation, given his young age. He is currently waiting to enlist in National Service.

Tuan Anh, a 23-year-old Vietnamese national, was sentenced to eight weeks’ jail and a fine of S$2,000.

None of the victims can be named due to a court gag order to protect their identities.

NUS CASE

The court heard that Lim began visiting the NUS UTown in January last year. He was on a bus from Choa Chu Kang to Sentosa when he needed to use the toilet and alighted at the university to do so.

When he was done, he saw a female student entering the women’s toilet. 

Finding her attractive, he followed her in.

“Following this incident, the accused developed a habit of visiting NUS UTown on almost every Sunday with the intention to look at female students. The accused would cycle from his place at Choa Chu Kang to NUS UTown to walk around the campus looking at female students,” Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Colin Ng told the court.

On March 17 last year, he narrowly escaped being caught after peeping at a female student from an adjacent cubicle. 

The female student immediately left the toilet but returned about half an hour later with a friend. 

Noticing that the cubicle that Lim had occupied was locked, they knocked on the door, suspecting he was still inside.

When there was no response, they went to the security office to alert campus security officers. 

Lim left by the time the students returned with the officers.

He later confessed that he had peeped at the victim and masturbated while fantasising about her. 

He was nabbed on May 5 last year when an NUS campus security officer saw him loitering suspiciously outside the women’s toilet through closed-circuit television monitors.

Two other security officers went there, by which time Lim had already entered one of the cubicles.

They went in and demanded that Lim open the cubicle door. He refused to do so at first, but eventually relented.

He initially insisted that he had entered the women’s toilet by mistake, but later admitted that he had deliberately followed the student in as he would “get an adrenaline rush”, DPP Ng said.

Lim will return to court on March 26 for sentencing. His lawyer T M Sinnadurai told the court that this was his first offence and that he has started attending counselling sessions of his own volition.

NTU CASE

In the NTU case, Tuan Anh walked past his victim on April 18 last year when he noticed she was heading to the men’s washroom.

Court documents did not state if she stayed in that particular residential hall — its name was redacted — or why she went to the men’s washroom to shower.

Tuan Anh went back to his room to retrieve his mobile phone, followed her in and went to an empty cubicle next to hers.

While she was drying herself, she noticed his phone at the top of the cubicle wall.

“The victim slammed the wall partition and the person filming her fled,” DPP Regina Lim told the court. 

Tuan Anh returned to his room and deleted the video he had taken. 

He was arrested by the police a week later and four obscene videos were discovered on his electronic devices.

In mitigation, his lawyer Luke Lee asked for two weeks’ jail, saying that Tuan Anh’s offence was “opportunistic” and that he has no family in Singapore. 

He was studying at NTU on a scholarship and has completed his final-year examinations.

Mr Lee also tried to argue that the deletion of the shower video was a mitigating factor, as he could not watch it again or disseminate it.

But District Judge Adam Nakhoda said that the potential for such videos to be shared with other people “always exists in these cases”.