Man climbed onto parapet to film woman showering in flat

SINGAPORE: A man climbed onto a parapet to watch a woman showering and later used his phone to film the victim for "a better view".

For insulting the modesty of this 23-year-old woman, along with two others, 27-year-old Mohamed Noor Hakim Mohamed Jamal was sentenced to nine weeks' jail on Monday (Nov 11).

The court heard that Hakim was a despatch rider at the time of the offences. 

He had targeted three victims, aged 23, 22 and 18, once every year since 2017.

The first incident occurred on the night of Aug 29, 2017, when Hakim was playing with his nieces at a playground in a housing estate. 

All locations were redacted from court documents to protect the victims' identities.

He noticed that the lights were switched on in a toilet at a flat and had an urge to peep inside, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Benedict Chan.

He climbed onto the ledge of the parapet located outside of the toilet and peeped in, but could see only the head and shoulders of a woman inside.

Court documents did not state which floor this occurred at.

In order to get a better view of the victim, Hakim took a video recording of the woman with his phone, before returning to his nieces at the playground.

After watching it, he deleted the video as he feared being caught with it.

However, a neighbour saw Hakim walking up and down the corridor and taking a picture of video of the toilet, and reported the incident to the police.

Hakim went on to offend a second time more than a year later on Nov 6, 2018.

TARGETS SECOND VICTIM A YEAR LATER

He stood along the corridor outside a flat and watched a 22-year-old woman taking off her clothes.

The woman told her brother-in-law what happened, and he tried to catch Hakim but did not manage to, as he had left.

The family aimed their closed-circuit television camera towards the location where Hakim and been, and successfully caught him trying to peek into the unit again four days later.

He was arrested and admitted to peeping into the victim's ninth-floor unit several times.

The third incident occurred on Aug 7 this year, while Hakim was on his way to visit his sister.

He cycled past a flat that he was familiar with, as he had seen a girl inside when he broke into the house in 2017.

He parked his bicycle a few blocks away and went to the unit, carefully avoiding police cameras along the way, said the prosecutor.

He heard someone showering in the toilet and stood on the parapet in front of the toilet window to film her.

He extended his phone through the ajar toilet window to record the 18-year-old girl showering.

The girl saw his hand and the phone and screamed, prompting Hakim to flee.

He admitted to committing the offences to "satisfy his sexual urges".

The prosecution asked for 11 weeks' jail, saying that Hakim's multiple offences over three years "demonstrated his persistent voyeuristic ways".

"The accused has no psychiatric illness or disorder, and his urges were not uncontrollable," he said.

Hakim had tried to destroy evidence by deleting video footage of two victims, and had intentionally avoided police cameras to evade detection.

For each count of intruding on the privacy of a woman to insult her modesty, Hakim could have been jailed for up to a year, fined, or both.