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These three women were upskirted. Their lives have never been the same again
Many do not realise the deep and long-lasting psychological impact of upskirting offences on victims, who say that they are often dismissed and belittled by people with whom they share their horrific experiences.
(Illustration: CNA/ Samuel Woo)
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Nicole Lam
Deborah Lau
30 Nov 2024 09:30PM(Updated: 01 Dec 2024 10:39AM)Bookmark
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It should have been a typical Saturday in August this year. Linda, a design student in her early 20s, was headed to a friend’s graduation ceremony when her world turned upside down.
She was waiting to board the train at Buona Vista MRT station when a couple approached her and said they had spotted a man taking upskirt photos of her while she had been travelling up the escalator earlier at the train station.
“(The couple) pointed out the guy, who (by then) was looking at us with shifty eyes and walking away quickly from me,” said Linda, who declined to be identified by her real name.
The couple told Linda they had not pursued him, because they noticed he had swiftly deleted the photos when they were nearing him.
As the information sunk in, a shaken Linda began crying as she set foot on the train. However, her emotions quickly evolved into that of rage, as she thought about how her offender could have done the same to other women.
“It dawned on me that I could have been just one of his many victims, and I felt the need to stop him,” she recalled.
“In a sudden fit of rage, I went down every single train carriage looking for him but could not find him.”
She later alighted and approached the ground staff at Boon Lay MRT Station and was advised to make a police report.
Linda did so but has not heard back about the status of the case.
“I feel very upset just knowing that a dangerous creep like that can go about his daily life, possibly even violating more girls, and it makes me feel very disgusted and scared.”
Even though she was not physically harmed by the incident, it has had a lasting impact. Four months on, she continues to be haunted by her perpetrator’s actions.
“I feel scared when I take escalators or sit on trains. I always look over my shoulder now and get suspicious of any man standing behind me with his phone out,” she said.
“Sometimes, we make eye contact and I just feel like an anxious and crazy woman who’s paranoid about every man around her, but I just can’t help it.”
Linda told CNA TODAY that she has also become very conscious of her attire in public. She wears dresses or shorts only if her boyfriend is with her, as he can stand behind her on escalators to protect her from potential voyeurs.
Otherwise, she wears long pants as much as possible. And when she does go out wearing shorts, she will also wear an additional pair of safety shorts underneath — something she never used to do because they are quite uncomfortable and can cause chafing or even rashes in Singapore’s weather.
While she is saddened at having to change up her wardrobe and avoid wearing clothes she likes, Linda said she feels she has to do it for her own safety.
“I have tons of cute clothes in my wardrobe collecting dust because I’m so scared to wear them,” she lamented.
She also prefers to stand sideways when travelling up escalators alone.
“Sure, it looks weird … but I prefer to know the person behind me is not doing anything funny.”
STILL “VERY MINDFUL” AFTER SIX YEARS
Indeed, the impact of upskirting is often more far-reaching than many realise – and 42-year-old Ms Chen knows this all too well.Six years after she fell prey to an upskirter, Ms Chen – who works in the technology sector and declined to give her full name – still vividly recalls what transpired that day.
Ms Chen had stopped by a pharmacy at Raffles Place MRT Station after work one evening.
While testing a cosmetic item, Ms Chen looked up at a mirror in the store and locked eyes with a man, who seemed startled that she had seen him.
“I saw this guy in the reflection, and he was very shocked, as though he wasn’t expecting me to look at him in the (mirror’s) reflection. I was also wondering what he was doing in that aisle itself, and that’s when I felt a bit uncomfortable.”
Still, she shook off the nagging feeling, thinking it was just fatigue from a long work day.
“I decided to continue testing and looking at other products, but soon after, I felt something was wrong again. As I did a side glance… I saw him.”
The same man was squatting at a corner of the aisle, with his arm and phone outstretched. Realising Ms Chen had caught him in the act of taking a photo, he quickly stood up and darted out of the shop.
Stunned, Ms Chen sought the assistance of the pharmacy’s staff, requesting the woman to check the CCTV footage in the shop.
“When she came out (of the staff room), she was clutching her chest and close to tears when she said, ‘Oh my god… you were upskirted twice.’”
Ms Chen made a police report that night, and later told her sisters and friends about the upskirting episode.
“I realised that when I was explaining (the incident to them), I often felt like I had to tell them I was actually in a work dress, and that it was not a short dress,” she recalled.
“Later, I realised it was unnecessary because the very act of upskirting is wrong.”
For a few months after the incident, Ms Chen tried to avoid walking around the area as it would bring back unpleasant memories and negative emotions.
She has also become more cautious of her surroundings in general, especially when travelling up an escalator.
“I’ll be very mindful to have a bag and to make sure it is covering the back of my skirt.”
Her perpetrator was apprehended a few months after committing the crime.
While he had offered her a restitution of S$2,000 to settle the matter privately outside of court, Ms Chen declined.
He was eventually sentenced to two weeks’ jail.
"I TRIED TO CATCH HIM"
During a routine supermarket run at Jurong Point six months ago, Ms Joey K, 27, was browsing the aisles when something unusual caught her eye – a man crouched nearby, his phone facing upwards on the floor.“I was a bit taken aback because the outfit I was wearing was a typical grocery shopping kind of outfit,” said Ms K who works in marketing and is an online content creator also known online as misssonglai.
She explained that she had worn a simple T-shirt and knee-length shorts with a flare cut.
“I was too shocked to react, and I thought I was imagining things,” said Ms K. Her husband was in another aisle at the time, and it happened so quickly that she began wondering whether she had imagined the whole thing.
“I just kept thinking, was it real?” recalled Ms K, but she knew something was wrong as the man behaved suspiciously along the supermarket aisles.
“You can see him running to other aisles and just squatting down really fast,” she said.
“I tried to catch him, but he wasn’t doing it in front of me,” said Ms K.
This was not Ms K’s first encounter with an upskirt offender.
Back in 2020, when there was an easing of some pandemic measures and people were allowed to return to work, Ms K was upskirted while on her way to the office one morning.
At the time, she was standing on the escalator at an MRT station when she felt a “tickling” sensation against the back of her legs.
Her initial confusion quickly turned to unease. Due to pandemic safe-distancing measures, everyone around her was standing quite far apart from each other, and the train station was quieter than usual, with many people still working from home.
“The second time I felt this tickling, I turned around and saw this guy standing behind me and a phone under my dress,” said Ms K.
Realising what was happening, an incensed Ms K grabbed the man and demanded to see his phone.
“When I got the phone, I couldn’t find anything at all. It made me feel so crazy,” said Ms K. She knew that some perpetrators could quickly move photos to another folder or delete them in that split second, adding to her growing anger and anxiety.
“I pulled down my mask and was shouting at him and I was trembling, too.”
The man continued to deny doing anything and walked away. Adamant and trusting her instincts, Ms K followed the man onto the train and confronted him, asking to see the photos.
Feeling a mix of fury and fear, Ms K’s said she was shaking as she returned the phone to the man and walked away.
A few weeks after the incident, her heart would start racing when she stood on the escalator and she constantly looked over her shoulder to see who was behind her, Ms K recalled.
“Just because you didn’t find the hard evidence doesn’t mean it didn't happen. Sometimes, (the perpetrators) just delete or clear it really fast,” said Ms K.
In fact, she has seen this happen in a dramatic way: More than 10 years ago, during her polytechnic days, Ms K confronted a man at a bus stop who had been taking her picture with a camera.
To her shock, he swallowed his SD card to prevent her from obtaining any proof.
“I want anyone in the same situation to know that if you ever question whether something like this has happened to you, it’s most likely real. Trust yourself,” said Ms K, who no longer wears dresses when she takes the MRT.
When she was younger, Ms K had the notion that upskirting offences only happened if you were wearing a short skirt, but the various incidents she has personally encountered over the years changed her views.
“After it happened to me, I realised you can be wearing anything, and it can still happen to you.”
She added: “When I take the escalators now, I always turn around to see who’s standing behind me. If it’s a man, I would turn around and run up the escalator quickly.”
“I hate it when men stand behind me on the escalators,” said Ms K, who added that her unpleasant encounters have left her hypervigilant about her surroundings.
TROUBLING UPWARD TREND OF UPSKIRTING IN SINGAPORE
The encounters experienced by the three women are far from isolated incidents in Singapore, which has seen a troubling rise in voyeuristic offences, including upskirting, in recent years.In 2020, the Annual Crime Brief reported 394 voyeurism cases. This rose sharply to 467 cases in 2021.
While the number of cases declined slightly to 424 in 2022, it rose again in 2023 – this time climbing to 476 cases.
Voyeurism encompasses a range of acts that involve non-consensual observation or recording of an individual in private settings or situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Upskirting, specifically, refers to the act of taking photographs or videos under a person’s clothing, typically with the intention of capturing images of their underwear or intimate areas, without their knowledge or consent.
In fact, it is a form of sexual violence facilitated by technology, said Ms Sugidha Nithiananthan, the director of advocacy and research at the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE).
In May 2019, Parliament passed the Criminal Law Reform Act, introducing significant amendments to the Penal Code to address emerging crime trends and enhance protections for vulnerable individuals.
Among the changes, the Penal Code now directly covers voyeurism offences, including the taking of upskirt photos. These amendments came into effect on 1 January 2020.
Before 2020, voyeurism was not criminalised under any specific statutory provision.
Instead, it was criminalised under the Insult of Modesty provisions of the Penal Code and the Films Act.
According to an article on his website, lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam said: “These patchwork of laws, however, did not adequately cover the range of circumstances in which voyeurism offences are committed”.
For example, the possession of voyeuristic still images was not covered.
The newly introduced Section 377BB of the Penal Code defined what exactly constitutes voyeurism and provided adequate punishments.
Previously, “upskirting” was punishable under the old Section 509 of the Penal Code, which did not specifically address recording videos and carried a maximum jail term of one year.
Under the updated Section 377BB, the act is now explicitly criminalised, and the maximum jail term has been increased to two years.
The move by Parliament came amid a spate of high-profile upskirting cases in 2019.
In June that year, 26-year-old Lee Zhen Hao was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment after taking over 140 upskirt videos within three months. He had intended to sell these videos online for between S$30 and S$80 each.
Four months later, four individuals were charged for their involvement in the “SG Nasi Lemak” Telegram chat group, which had over 44,000 members and was used to share obscene content, including upskirt images.
The 39-year-old administrator Liong Tianwei, was jailed for nine weeks and fined S$26,000.
Another administrator of the chat, Leonard Teo Min Xuan, 27, was sentenced to one year of mandatory treatment for major depressive disorder.
Then, in November, a 19-year-old polytechnic student, Khai Jun Wei, was sentenced to 21 months’ probation for taking upskirt videos of 17 women at various MRT stations.
TOUCHING NOT NEEDED TO HURT A PERSON
While non-victims might dismiss upskirting and other non-physical forms of sexual violence as less serious, because they do not cause visible or physical injury to survivors, the stories of women who have been upskirted show that the harm caused is real and lasting.“You do not need to touch a person to hurt them. Similarly, perpetrators can be sexually violent without physically assaulting the survivor,” said AWARE’s Ms Nithiananthan.
Victims of these sexual offences experience trauma symptoms that are similar to what victims of physical sexual assault, such as molestation and rape, feel.
This can include disturbed sleep and appetite, hypervigilance, avoidance of places where they had experienced voyeurism, social withdrawal, and poorer relationships and friendships.
These are some of the changes that 28-year-old communications professional Ms Yeo, who declined to give her full name, has undergone.
Ten years ago, she was filmed in a public washroom at her polytechnic. Her perpetrator had stuck his phone underneath the gap of a neighbouring stall.
Since then, Ms Yeo has been paranoid about going to public washrooms, and always chooses the last stall flanking the wall.
She also said the incident “destroyed (and) did a lot of damage” to her mental state and that she had “never felt so violated in her life”.
Ms Yeo also finds that she is hypervigilant of her surroundings, “constantly (keeping her mind) switched on” for anything out of the ordinary.
In fact, she noted that she has become so on edge when out in public that she once almost knocked a girl’s phone out of her hands when she felt a brush behind her on the escalator on her way to work.
“It hit me that I’ve gotten so high-strung. If I felt anybody around me or could have any device near me, I would react that way.”
Most recently, she was going down the escalator at Bishan MRT station when she realised a man was standing extremely close to her and tying his shoelace with his phone camera facing upwards towards her. She noted his descriptions and immediately made a police report.
Dr Annabelle Chow, principal clinical psychologist of Annabelle Psychology, said the reason these offences might be downplayed is because sexual aggression and crime are often viewed on a spectrum or hierarchy.
“Given that upskirting is a non-contact sexual crime, the behaviour may be seen as ‘mild’ since it does not actually physically ‘hurt’ the victim, unlike other offences such as rape or molestation,” said Dr Chow.
In fact, Ms June Fong, senior forensic psychologist of Promises Healthcare, noted that the psychological and emotional impact on victims of non-contact offences could be more far-reaching than victims of contact sexual offences.
This is because in addition to the initial shock of the event, survivors also live in fear that their images are immortalised on the internet, or are stored on someone’s computer or phone forever.
Dr Lynette Rama, clinical and forensic psychologist also from Promises Healthcare, added that because these pictures or videos might be distributed on the internet or via chat groups, it can lead to revictimisation, even beyond the original offender’s control.
The impact of these offences can bleed into all aspects of the survivor's life, said Ms Nithiananthan. Survivors might also have to endure the long, frustrating and expensive process of trying to get their images taken down from various sites.
“However, it can be nearly impossible to permanently remove an image, potentially contributing to the survivor’s trauma,” she said. Because of this, survivors of these offences suffer long-lasting anxiety and lack of control.
Furthermore, the tendency of others to diminish or dismiss the impact of non-physical sexual violence can compound survivors’ confusion and self-blame, hamper their recovery and deter them from reporting their experiences to authorities, added Ms Nithiananthan.
Dr Chow added that dismissing the offence by pretending it did not happen or simply asking the perpetrator to delete the images does not lessen the emotional impact or trauma experienced by the survivors.
“Such responses trivialise the offence and fail to recognise the emotional and psychological harm inflicted on victims.”
Agreeing, Ms K said that while the incident was deeply unsettling, what enraged her the most was the response she received when she shared her experience on Instagram. Comments flooded in, with many either dismissing the severity of the incident or outright victim-shaming.
Some commenters questioned whether Ms K was overreacting, while others accused her of seeking attention or boasting about her appearance.
Beyond the victim-shaming and dismissive remarks, Ms K often wonders about the incidents she might have missed, when the perpetrators’ actions went unnoticed.
“Out of 10 times, maybe I caught them four or five times. But what about the other five times I didn’t? For all I know, they got the angle they wanted and uploaded it to those websites. It’s just such a sad thought.”
“I can't even imagine how many times the photo has been used or circulated,” said Ms K.
Noting that there is often limited awareness about the emotional and psychological impact of non-contact offences, counsellors also told CNA TODAY that it is not uncommon for others to trivialise non-contact offences, as there is “no physical harm” involved.
Dr Rama said: “One of the significant factors for why non-contact offences are sometimes downplayed is the perception that since there was no visible physical harm done to the victim, their bodily integrity was not violated in the same way.”
The experts said that in some instances, survivors may even find themselves at the receiving end of victim-blaming. This shifts the focus of the offence to the victim – including blaming the victim’s dressing, for example – instead of the perpetrators and their behaviour.
This is something that victims who spoke to CNA TODAY could relate to.
Apart from her boyfriend and closest friends, Linda said that she was hesitant to confide in others about the upskirt incident.
“The only people in my family who know about this are my sister and grandmother. I felt scared that people would judge me if I told them, and I know my mother would freak out.
“Even my grandmother asked if I was wearing a very short skirt,” she added.
WHAT SURVIVORS CAN DO
Responding to CNA TODAY’s queries, the police said they’ve introduced a “Sexual Crime Report” option at the queue management system kiosk at Neighbourhood Police Centres.“When a victim of sexual crime selects this option at the kiosk, the Police will prioritise attending to them and facilitate their reporting in a private area.”
In addition, the police have a programme known as the Victim Care Cadre Programme (VCCP) to support victims of these various crimes, including sexual crimes.
These Victim Care Officers (VCO) work with the Police to support victims of crime, including victims of sexual crimes, scams and other serious offences throughout the investigation process.
Apart from this, victims may also reach out to centres such as AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre for support.
The Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO) also runs the SHECARES@SCWO support centre for survivors of online harms. In addition to operating a helpline and text line for victims, the centre provides pro bono counselling support and legal clinics.
And while the core psychological treatment approaches for victims of sexual offences with and without contact share fundamental similarities, the counselling support provided may still differ slightly in practical terms, said Dr Chow.
For one thing, survivors of contact offences may require additional focus on the physical aspects of their trauma, such as managing sensitivities to touch, she explained.
In contrast, non-contact offence survivors may need greater support in dealing with the impact of privacy violations and fears surrounding the non-consensual distribution of their images.
Noting the realities of victim-blaming, Ms Fong of Promises Healthcare said that a crucial aspect of therapy for victims of non-contact sexual crime is to enable them to advocate for themselves in the face of such societal attitudes that minimise victims’ distress.
“They might hear things like ‘It’s only upskirting, it’s not like you were molested’; or ‘Was it because you were wearing a short skirt?’, or even ‘Take it as a compliment that someone finds you attractive’.
“Part of therapy is enabling victims to shake off the feelings of self-blame they might experience.”
Beyond these, broader societal support is also required – including fostering greater gender equality and more respectful societal attitudes towards women.
Ms Nithiananthan of AWARE said that such offences are essentially forms of gender-based violence.
“Global research shows that most perpetrators are men and boys and most survivors are women and girls. These are not innocent, accidental or playful acts, or schoolboy larks. It is a form of sexual violence and must be understood in that context," she said.
“Behaviour such as this is ultimately about power and control and a disregard of women's consent and agency. It is a form of misogyny, abusing women’s ignorance and helplessness in these situations, to feed a man’s sense of power, control and superiority."
Agreeing, Dr Razwana Begum, the head of the public safety and security programme at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), noted that gender inequality often fosters environments where harassment – including offences like upskirting – is normalised or trivialised.
Dr Razwana said that many offences stem from unequal power dynamics, where perpetrators feel entitled to violate others’ personal boundaries.
Normalising equitable gender roles from a young age thus addresses this imbalance, creating a culture of accountability.
“Teaching children about mutual respect and boundaries (also) dismantles harmful stereotypes, such as the idea that such behaviours are ‘just boys being boys’,” she added.
The experts added that age-appropriate discussions about consent should also be incorporated into the education curriculum.
Ms Daisy Anne Mitchell, 26 – who had pictures of herself taken at Tanah Merah MRT Station in 2023 while she was decked in activewear – said: “I’m flabbergasted that someone has the audacity to do that and think it’s okay and think they can get away with it.”
“A lot of men just do not know what it's like to be in that situation,” the content creator and coach told CNA TODAY.
“You don't know what it's like to be confronted like that, to be violated like that, be sexualised, to be scrutinised… It’s crazy.”
