Japanese man who took upskirt videos of 37 victims jailed 16 weeks
Over a period of about one year, a 34-year-old Japanese man used his Apple iPad tablet to record upskirt videos of 37 women, a district court heard.
But he was arrested when a sharp eyed member of the public spotted him trying to record another such video in Orchard Road on a Sunday afternoon in 2016.
On Wednesday (24 October), Akira Yamamura was jailed for a total of 16 weeks for his crimes. He pleaded guilty to 13 out of 37 charges of insulting the modesty of a woman. The remaining charges were considered in sentencing.
The court heard that on 9 October 2016, at about 4.45pm, Akira was walking along Orchard Road in front of 313@Somerset, towards Somerset MRT station, when he saw a woman in a dress and decided to take an upskirt video.
Akira held his iPad in between two books and switched on the recording function on the tablet’s in-built camera. He turned the camera to face upwards, walked closely behind the woman and placed it under her dress in an attempt to record her inner thighs and underwear.
However, a passer-by saw what Akira was doing and alerted the woman’s fiance, who was with her. The couple then confronted Akira. He tried to flee, but was detained by other passers-by.
When policemen arrived, Akira admitted making three attempts to take upskirt videos of the woman.
His iPad contained another upskirt video of an unknown woman, which he had recorded at about 4.30pm that day along Orchard Road.
After his arrest, Akira also admitted to taking upskirt videos for about a year. He would store the videos in encrypted folders in his tablet, together with screenshots of certain frames of the videos.
A total of 27 video files and 579 photos in relation to the upskirt videos involving 37 unknown women were found in his iPad.
For each of his charges, Akira could have been jailed for one year and also fined.
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