Man jailed 24 weeks for filming upskirt videos in his office and MRT
He took upskirt videos of his subordinate for over a year and obtained 16 videos over separate occasions in a local bank where he worked.
Teo Ding Luen, a Singaporean, was caught after his attempt to take a video of another woman on board an MRT train was spotted by a passenger, who then called the police. The 40-year-old, who is married with a six-year-old son, later admitted to the police that he had been taking upskirt videos since 2009 and had taken hundreds of them.
Teo, who was an assistant vice president in the bank, was sentenced to 24 weeks’ jail in the State Courts on Thursday (28 September). He was convicted on 17 charges of insulting the modesty of a woman with 45 similar charges taken into consideration for sentencing.
Between June 2015 and July 2016, Teo preyed on his colleague, a woman who worked as an executive. He was the woman’s manager. While in the office, Teo would use a pinhole camera to film the woman by positioning the device to face her inner thighs. This would happen while the woman was seated at her desk, standing up, or talking to him. The woman was unaware of Teo’s actions.
The videos would last from six seconds to over 11 minutes and would capture the woman’s inner thigh and underwear. Teo would then rename the video files with the woman’s initials for ease of reference. Just 10 days after the last video of his colleague, Teo filmed another upskirt video of a 25-year-old woman on the MRT.
On 25 July last year, Teo boarded the train at Bishan MRT station around 8.56am when he saw the woman standing beside the door in the carriage. He had earlier cut a small hole in a black paper bag in which he placed a pinhole camera that was positioned facing outwards. Teo had also turned on the recording function of the camera.
Standing behind the woman, Teo placed the camera beneath the her skirt but was spotted by a male passenger who detained him and called the police when the train stopped at Toa Payoh station.
Police later seized Teo’s electronic devices, including his pinhole camera, tablet, and mobile phone. A forensic examination conducted on Teo’s mobile phone found 62 upskirt videos. Teo told the police that he would transfer the videos to a portable hard disk. He would edit the videos that he liked and transfer them to his mobile phone.
According to Teo’s lawyer Anand Nalachandran, Teo had dropped his son off at a childcare centre before heading off to take the MRT to work.
He said that when his client noticed a female passenger in a short skirt, he had succumbed to an “impulsive urge” to take an upskirt video, despite his attempts to resist the urge.
He added that his client, who has been diagnosed with a voyeuristic disorder, has since resigned from his job and “proactively sought a psychiatric evaluation as well as commenced medication” prescribed by a private psychiatrist. He also complied with treatment by an Institute of Mental Health psychiatrist and psychologist.
Nalachandran said that his client’s condition was “contributory” to his actions as it impaired his ability to check his urges. The lawyer asked for a 12-week jail sentence to be imposed on his client.
However, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Chew Xin Ying argued for no mitigating weight to be placed on Teo’s condition due to the lack of causal link between the offence and his disorder. DPP Chew argued for a sentence of at least 20 weeks’ jail.
District Judge (DJ) Kenneth Yap noted that the workplace and MRT trains were places where it was hard for women to have their guard up all the time. “At stake is the protection of women when they travel, work, go shopping,” said the DJ. He highlighted that deterrence was needed to send a message that such offences would entail severe sentences.
For insulting the modesty of a woman, Teo could have been jailed up to one year and/or fined.
