SINGAPORE, April 13 — He followed his female colleague into the toilet to take a video of her private parts while she was in the cubicle, then denied doing so when he got caught, and even stayed around after the incident.
The 25-year-old man pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of voyeurism and was sentenced to eight weeks’ jail.
Neither party can be named due to a court order to protect the victim’s identity.
Their employer cannot be named as well. The man, a citizen of China, worked there as a car washer. The nature of the victim’s work was not stated.
What happened
On Aug 31 last year, the victim entered the female toilet on the second floor of her workplace.
The man followed her in without her knowledge, intending to take a video of her private parts with his phone.
As the victim was relieving herself in one of the cubicles, the man noticed that the cubicle next to hers was unoccupied and decided to use it to record the victim.
He entered the vacant cubicle and locked the cubicle door behind him.
He then squatted and placed his iPhone through the gap between the cubicles to record the victim.
When the woman was almost done relieving herself, she noticed that there was a mobile phone on recording mode placed under the partition gap on her left with a front-facing camera.
She immediately shouted and quickly got dressed before leaving the cubicle.
She knocked several times on the locked cubicle door where the man remained and she forced him to eventually open the door.
By then, the man had deleted the video recording in a bid to ensure that his actions would go undiscovered.
When he opened the door, the victim recognised him as her colleague and confronted him about what he did.
At first, he did not reply, before begging her not to inform anyone about the incident.
She then called her boss to the toilet. While she was doing this, the man quickly deleted the video from the “recently deleted” photo album folder in his phone.
When her boss arrived, the perpetrator again refused to admit what he was doing in the female toilet.
At about 2.20pm that day, the boss called the police and said that a male had been caught taking videos of a female colleague in the toilet, and that “he does not know we have called the police and he is walking around” the workplace.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DDP) Marcus Foo sought 10 to 12 weeks’ jail for the man, who was not represented by a lawyer.
Speaking to the court through an interpreter, the man said in Mandarin that he had lost his job as a result of his actions and became financially strapped.
This affected his ability to support his father, who lost his legs in a workplace accident and cannot seek employment due to his disability. The father is living in a nursing home in China.
The offender also said that the period he had spent in remand had given him time to reflect on his actions, leaving him remorseful for what he did.
He has been in remand since March 30.
However, DPP Foo said that consequences such as losing a job should not be taken into account in sentencing, since a person who breaches the law should expect to face such outcomes.
District Judge Shawn Ho sentenced him to eight weeks’ jail.
Anyone found guilty of voyeurism can be jailed for up to two years, fined, caned, or given any combination of the three. — TODAY
