S'porean man, 38, records domestic helper showering, tells police that 'someone' did it, gets jail
Police found the deleted video in his phone.Daniel Seow |
While he was alone at home with his domestic helper, a 38-year-old Singaporean man secretly used his phone to record her showering in the kitchen toilet.
After the helper caught him doing so and voiced out to the man's wife, she confronted him but he denied it.
However, the man later called the police, saying, “My maid saw someone taking video using black handphone same as mine when she was bathing earlier. During that time only me and her at home during the incident happened. Need police.”
He was caught and sentenced to three months' and two weeks' jail on Aug. 20.
Caught in the act
Court documents indicated that the incident happened on Mar. 19, when the man and the victim, a 25-year-old Burmese national, were the only two people at home.
The man cannot be named under a gag order to protect the victim.
At about 1:15pm, the victim headed to the kitchen toilet to take a shower.
About five minutes later, the man went to the toilet and raised his phone at an angle that he could record the victim showering through a window opening.
The court heard that the man "intended to capture a video of her nude in the shower" without consent, and that he knew the angle "would allow him to capture the victim clearly".
"This is because he had earlier taken a video of the kitchen toilet while it was empty, and from a similar angle," court documents stated.
While showering, the victim noticed a phone pointing towards her, which frightened her and made her squat down immediately.
She only stood up to continue showering once the phone was removed.
Despite that, the man managed to capture a video of the victim squatting down "in a state of full undress" for about 3 to 4 seconds.
Man called police to say 'someone' took video
After finishing her shower, the victim "did not know what to do" so she told her sister about the incident.
Her sister advised her to tell the man's wife about it, but the victim was "too scared" to tell her when she got home at around 4pm, as the man was also at home.
Eventually, the victim mustered up the courage to tell the man's wife about it at about 10:25pm that night.
The man's wife then confronted him about the matter, but he denied taking the video.
At around 11:13pm, the man called the police, claiming that his helper saw "someone" taking the video.
The police arrived and looked through the deleted album of the man's phone, only to find a deleted video of the victim showering.
It was at this point that the man admitted that he had taken a video of the victim showering “out of impulse”.
Abused trust as employer to satisfy lustful desires: Prosecution
The man was subsequently charged with one count of voyeurism.
The prosecution sought a deterrent sentence of five-and-a-half to eight months jail for him.
The prosecution said that the man had "abused the trust reposed in him as an employer" to take the video of his domestic helper, and "continued to deny any wrongdoing until he was confronted with incontrovertible evidence of the same".
"The accused took advantage of that trust to satisfy his own lustful desires in the very place where the victim stayed and would have expected to feel secure," the prosecution added.
In mitigation, the prosecution noted that the man had pleaded guilty at an early stage.
During the sentencing on Aug. 20, the judge reprimanded the man, saying that his act of secretly filming his domestic helper showering was "extremely despicable" and that he "failed to fulfill his responsibilities as an employer", Shin Min Daily News (Shin Min) reported
