Expelled Yale-NUS student gets jail for filming shower videos of housemates, taking upskirt photos
Yale-NUS College campus. (Photo: Yale-NUS College)
SINGAPORE: A former Yale-NUS College student was sentenced to 27 weeks' jail on Friday (Feb 7) for taking shower videos of his housemates and upskirt photos on campus.
The 26-year-old man, who cannot be identified due to a gag order imposed by the court, had earlier been expelled from the college for his actions.
The sentence was shorter than the 30 weeks' jail pushed for by Deputy Public Prosecutor Gabriel Lim, but more than the 20 weeks asked for by defence lawyers Josephus Tan and Cory Wong.
District Judge Adam Nakhoda said the offences had occurred over one-and-a-half years from August 2017, with the majority of the charges involving the man surreptitiously filming his housemates while they were showering.
Three charges are for taking upskirt photos of his classmates.
The judge said the level of intrusion in the showering charges was high, as he managed to film the victims in the nude as they showered, capturing most of their faces.
He noted that the clips were stored on the accused's laptop, and would be automatically upload to cloud storage.
He admitted to rewatching the videos whenever he felt overwhelmed by school work, the judge noted.
The ease of mobile phone cameras and the ability to store and rewatch them are precisely the reason why sentences need to be sufficiently deterrent, said Judge Nakhoda.
He said there was also an abuse of trust, noting that the accused had deleted the recording he took of one of the victims after being confronted by her.
He added that the primary need was to protect potential victims by sending a strong message to potential offenders that their actions will not be condoned.
However, he accepted that the accused cooperated with police and showed his remorse, making efforts to rehabilitate himself.
He granted the accused time to speak to his family after the hearing.
For each count of insulting a woman's modesty, the accused could have been given a maximum year's jail, a fine, or both.
