Man who recorded sisters-in-law, colleagues in toilet to be assessed for MTO
Wan Ting Koh
·Senior Reporter
Cottonmouth, pussy whipper
Editor
Mon, 14 March 2022, 12:55 pm·4-min read
A pen with a small camera lens embedded (PHOTO: Yahoo News Singapore file photo)
SINGAPORE — A man who used a pinhole camera to record his wife’s two sisters in private acts claimed he had done so to alleviate stress.
The 31-year-old man even managed to capture the pair showering together washing each other's cheebyes in the multiple times he recorded them in their home toilet.
The man, an assistant manager, also targeted female colleagues whom he found attractive and was finally caught when one saw his phone extended into her cubicle.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of insulting a woman’s modesty on Monday (14 March), with six other charges to be considered when he is sentenced. These include trespassing into a ladies’ toilet, other charges of insulting a woman’s modesty, and uploading several videos he took onto a forum.
The man cannot be named to protect the identities of his victims.
District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan ordered the man to attend a psychiatric assessment at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) so that he can be examined for a mandatory treatment suitability report.
This was on account of the man’s preliminary IMH report. It diagnosed him with adjustment disorder with depressed mood, which was said to be contributory to his offences.
Purchased pen with pinhole camera
He first began taking illicit videos in end-2017 and subsequently recorded upskirt videos for his sexual pleasure whenever he went for his breaks or his commutes.He bought a pinhole camera concealed in a pen and used it on his wife’s sisters, aged 30 and 33. While visiting his sisters-in-law at their flat, he placed the pen in a basket containing brushes and scrubs in the kitchen toilet to record the sisters. He would retrieve the device before leaving the flat.
He recorded them at least thrice in 2018, on the latter occasion capturing the two sisters showering together. A few days after this incident, the device stopped working and the man smashed it with a hammer before disposing of it.
Followed colleagues into the toilet
The man also targeted two female colleagues, aged 24 and 30, and another woman, 26, who was attending an induction programme with him.He followed the younger woman into the toilet and entered the cubicle next to hers. He then extended his mobile phone through the gap under the partition to film her. When he realised that the woman was aware of what he was doing, he stopped recording and decided to wait for her to leave.
Meanwhile, the woman managed to take a photograph of the man’s phone and waited outside for the suspect to exit the toilet. She eventually left and the man did so as well.
The victim then went into the conference room and told her assistant general manager that there had been a peeping tom at the toilet. The latter reviewed CCTV footage, which captured the man entering and exiting the toilet, and lodged a police report.
The man, who had assumed the woman was going to report the matter, quickly deleted the videos he had recorded and all other obscene material stored on his phone. When confronted by the police, he initially lied that he had stomach issues and needed to use the female toilet urgently. He eventually confessed to the offences.
Investigations later revealed that he had also filmed the 30-year-old colleague and the 26-year-old woman in the toilet in November 2019.
Recorded multiple upskirt videos
The man also recorded at least 16 upskirt videos between November 2018 and October 2019 at locations around Singapore, including a bakery, a Sheng Siong supermarket and on public transport.He would pretend to tie his shoelaces while filming under the skirts of women. At times, he also pretended to drop his wallet to do so. These videos were found in his devices, which were seized by the police.
In early 2019, the man uploaded three of these videos onto an adult forum.
The man was assessed at IMH, where he confessed that he had actually been caught by one of his victims in September 2018 after trying to take an upskirt video of her at an escalator in Tiong Bahru Plaza. He then "begged (his) way out of the situation" and deleted all of his obscene videos.
However, the incident did not deter him from future acts. Shortly after he was married in October 2018, he returned to illicitly recording women as "a maladaptive, dysfunctional coping mechanism", said the IMH report.
Only a month after he was married, he began targeting his wife’s two sisters. He also began downloading upskirt videos in March 2019.
Despite his disorder, the man conceded that he had been cognisant of both the "nature and wrongfulness of his actions", which were not motivated by an irresistible urge to control himself, but rather intended to "assuage his sense of sexual desire".
The man’s case will return to court on 12 April. If found to be suitable for a mandatory treatment order, he may receive psychiatric treatment in lieu of jail time.
