SINGAPORE, Sept 22 — A 27-year-old man, who went on Facebook and posted a photograph of his wife having sex with her work supervisor, pleaded guilty in a district court on Tuesday (Sept 21) to one charge each of theft and distributing an intimate image.
The man, who was 26 at the time of the incident, had stolen his wife’s mobile phone and found the photo, along with two other video recordings, in it.
The image subsequently went viral and he took the Facebook post down, but reposted it again with her face blurred out.
District Judge Kessler Soh will consider two other similar charges for sentencing on Oct 1.
The man, who remains out on bail of S$15,000, cannot be named due to a court order to protect his wife’s identity.
The court heard that the woman, who is three years older than him, was in their matrimonial home on Feb 6 last year when the man arrived and asked to use the toilet.
He no longer lived there after moving out in December 2019, though court documents did not state the reason why.
When he was done in the bathroom, he went to the master bedroom where his wife was using her mobile phone.
He snatched her mobile phone and fled. She ran after him but was unable to catch up with him.
He had taken the device as he suspected she was having an affair and wanted to access her pictures and messages to confirm his suspicions.
He found a four-second recording, another 16-second recording, and the photo that he subsequently posted.
The faces of his wife and her boss were fully visible in the image.
He used his mobile phone to photograph and film these images, then returned to her home about half an hour later to return the phone to her without telling her what he had done.
Six days later at around 8am, he uploaded the image in a public post which included her supervisor’s name and occupation. He described the other man as a homewrecker and warned people to be aware of him.
The accused also included photographs of the man, as well as screenshots of messages between the man and his wife.
An hour after the post went up, a friend of the supervisor told him about it, while the accused’s wife received calls from her friends.
At about 4pm, there were about 1,000 comments on the post and it had been shared about 2,000 times by other Facebook users. There were around 3,000 “likes” on the post.
The accused decided to remove it because it had received so much attention, but then decided to use the same Facebook account to upload the same photo — this time, with her face blurred out.
“The accused claimed that he did so because he did not want others to share the same fate as him,” Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Foong Ke Hui told the court.
He also wanted the public to know what the other man had done, DPP Foong said.
This second post was only removed one day later.
For distributing an intimate image, he could be jailed for up to five years, fined, caned, or receive any combination of the three.
For theft in a dwelling, he could be jailed for up to seven years and fined. — TODAY
