Man admits to using hidden camera to film wife, sister-in-law in the shower
File photo of Singapore's State Courts. (Photo: CNA/Jeremy Long)
SINGAPORE: A 36-year-old man admitted on Thursday (Jun 27) that he had taken videos of his wife and sister-in-law showering in the nude with a pinhole camera.
The man's identity, along with those of the victims, are protected by gag orders.
The court heard that the Singaporean man lived in a flat with his wife and sister-in-law, whose details are redacted from court documents.
Sometime around April last year, the man placed a cube-shaped pinhole camera with video-recording functions in the common washroom of the flat, pasting the device to the water heater with Blu Tack.
He recorded videos of his wife and sister-in-law in the nude, retrieving the recordings and transferring the files to his hard disk before returning the camera to the washroom.
He also placed the camera on top of the mirror panel in the master bedroom toilet, recording a two-minute-long video of his wife showering without her knowledge, with her private parts clearly captured.
On the night of Apr 26 last year, the man's wife discovered video files on her husband's hard disk showing her sister showering in the common washroom.
She alerted her sister's husband about this. The accused returned home from work at about 9pm that day and went into the toilet. His brother-in-law noticed this and entered the washroom after the accused exited, finding the camera at the top of the water heater.
When the man's sister-in-law returned home that night, she was told that she had been filmed showering by the accused numerous times.
Traumatised, the woman cried and lodged a police report the next day.
Police officers seized items from the flat including a laptop, a mobile phone, an external hard disk, a piece of Blu Tack and the cube-shaped pinhole camera.
Forensic examinations of the hard disk uncovered videos of the man's wife and sister-in-law showering or relieving themselves, including five-minute-long clips of his sister-in-law using the toilet and showering.
A video of the man’s wife showering was also found on the mobile phone that was seized.
The man admitted that he placed a camera at the water heater on Apr 26, 2018, as he knew the two women had not bathed, and that he had a chance of filming them showering.
The man pleaded guilty to three charges of insulting a woman's modesty, with a fourth charge taken into consideration.
He will return to court for sentencing on Jul 8.
For each charge of intruding upon the privacy of a woman, with intention to insult her modesty, he could be jailed for up to a year, fined, or both.
