Jailed for taking upskirt videos, man reoffends at same location after release
Wan Ting Koh
·Senior Reporter
Thu, 3 June 2021, 2:31 pm·2-min read
Chinese Garden MRT Station Singapore (Yahoo News Singapore file photo)
SINGAPORE — Even after being sentenced to jail in 2019 for filming upskirt videos of more than 23 women at MRT stations and their surroundings, a man returned to his old ways following his release.
Kelmen Wong Yew Hui, 24, was caught red-handed by an MRT employee again after the latter was notified by a member of the public about Wong's suspicious behaviour.
Wong, who was serving his national service when he reoffended, was sentenced to 16 week’s jail on Thursday (3 June) after he pleaded guilty to two counts of of voyeurism by intentionally recording a person’s private parts in a situation where it would not otherwise be visible.
Wong first made the news in 2019 for the same offences. He pleaded guilty then to taking illicit videos of women at various MRT stations, an overhead bridge, and in a bus between June 2017 and March 2018, with many of the clips taken at Chinese Garden MRT station. Then a polytechnic student, Wong was arrested after an MRT employee who was in the latter's control station noticed him filming.
He was sentenced to 12 weeks’ jail on 6 May 2019.
For his current set of offences, Wong targeted females at Chinese Garden MRT station again.
On 11 March last year, Wong noticed a 13-year-old girl in school uniform and intended to film up her skirt.
He followed her through the gantry and up the escalator. While she stood in front of him, Wong began recording under her skirt, capturing her thighs and sports shorts. He later deleted this video.
A member of the public approached the MRT’s station manager a day later, to tell him that Wong had been seen taking an upskirt video of the young girl a day earlier. The station manager then went to the open area of the MRT station with the member of the public and managed to identify Wong. At the time, the station manager noticed Wong taking an upskirt video of a second victim, a 27-year-old woman.
Wong had followed this woman up the stairs of an overhead bridge near Chinese Garden MRT station and was filming under her dress when he was caught. The video recovered from his phone captured the woman’s underwear.
The station manager called the police on 12 March.
Wong’s lawyer, Amarjit Singh, who also represented him during his first conviction, told the court that a psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health had diagnosed him with paraphilia disorder in reports dated March and October 2020.
The disorder is said to have a causal link to his offences, according to Singh, who sought a mandatory treatment order for his client.
For voyeurism, Wong could have been jailed up to two years, or fined, or both.
