Jail, fine for former school teacher who took videos of students, colleagues and police officer in toilets

SINGAPORE: A former secondary school teacher was jailed 10 weeks and fined S$2,000 on Wednesday (Mar 23) for taking illicit videos of male students and colleagues in the school's toilets.

The 49-year-old offender was nabbed after filming a police officer naked in a condominium's clubhouse toilet.

He pleaded guilty last month to four charges of committing public nuisance by filming the victims and making obscene films. Another six charges were considered in sentencing.

Gag orders imposed by the court prohibit the publication of the victims' identities, as well as the offender's name and school.

District Judge Melissa Tan said that while a contributory link was found between the offender's persistent depression and his voyeurism, this was not significant.

She considered aggravating factors such as the fact that the offender's actions showed premeditation, his victims were unaware they were being filmed, and the risk of dissemination from videos being taken on a mobile phone.

There was also an element of abuse of trust where the victims were students of the school, the judge said.

A court previously heard that the offender entered a secondary school toilet where a male student was urinating on Oct 30, 2017.

He moved close to the student and filmed him urinating, without the student's knowledge. The 35-second video captured the victim's face and private parts.

The offender filmed another student who was changing out of his shorts in a school toilet later that year. On Apr 15, 2018, he also filmed a fellow male teacher who was urinating in a school toilet.

Later that same evening, the offender was in a condominium's clubhouse toilet when a 31-year-old police investigation officer, who had just finished swimming at the pool, entered for a shower.

While the officer was naked and drying himself, the accused pretended to look for his condominium access card. He walked around the officer and filmed him, telling him he was trying to see if he had left his card on the shower ledge.

The video captured the officer's private parts as well as his face. 

The officer felt that the offender's behaviour was suspicious. After putting on his clothes, he went out of the toilet to look for the man.

He approached the offender, identifying himself as a police officer. He told the offender he suspected the man had taken a video of him.

They walked towards the condominium's guard house, where the officer briefed the security guards about what had happened and asked the offender to unlock his phone in their presence.

The first thing that appeared when the offender did so was the video of the officer. Looking through the phone, the officer also saw numerous video recordings of naked men. One of the security guards made a police report.

Police found a total of 128 obscene films made by the offender between February 2017 and April 2018 in a phone and laptop that were seized. They included videos the offender recorded while standing next to unsuspecting victims at the urinal.

At least three of the videos were of teachers using a school toilet, and at least two were of students using a school toilet. At least 46 were recorded in the condominium's clubhouse toilet.