Former Yale-NUS student admits filming female dorm mates showering to help 'destress from academic pressure'

SINGAPORE — A former Yale-NUS College student pleaded guilty on Monday (Jan 13) to taking videos of four of his female housemates while they were showering in the common bathroom of the student dormitory they shared.

Court documents stated that the peeping tom had been residing with five other female residents in the suites, four of whom were later identified by investigators as his victims.

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

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

The court heard that he told investigators he had recorded the videos of his suite mates showering because “it helped him to destress from his academic pressure”, and that he re-watched the videos whenever he felt “overwhelmed with schoolwork”.

He cannot be named due to a court order to protect the identities of the man and his four victims.

In response to queries, Professor Joanne Roberts, executive vice-president of academic affairs at Yale-NUS College, told TODAY: "Yale-NUS College has dismissed a student for breaching the college's code of conduct and posing a safety risk to our community. The dismissal took effect from end-October, 2019."

The man had previously faced 24 charges in total because there were more than four victims in total who were filmed in classrooms at Yale-NUS, though only his four housemates were identified. The prosecution proceeded with eight charges.

Court documents stated that he 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 peeping tom 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 heard the noise and spotted a pair of feet on the other side of the door, and also saw a phone pointing at her.

As she shouted for her boyfriend, the man 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 peeping tom 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 at 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 Dean’s Fellows of Yale-NUS College and the campus security, and was told that there were no closed-circuit television cameras installed in the suite or in the vicinity of their floor and staircases. The Dean's Fellows supports students in fitting into the residential college, among other responsibilities.

When the housemate confronted the man again later, 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. They identified other female victims who were filmed showering in the toilet, as well as upskirt videos of women who could not be traced.

The case will be heard again on Jan 31 for his mitigation plea and sentencing.

District Judge Adam Nakhoda fixed S$15,000 bail, but the man's lawyer Josephus Tan from Invictus Law said that no one is present to post bail for him, which meant that he had to surrender to police custody.

He could be jailed up to a year, fined, or both for each charge of intruding on a woman's privacy to insult her modesty.