Serial upskirter jailed for looking up women's dresses in Kinokuniya bookstore

SINGAPORE: A 24-year-old man was jailed on Friday (Mar 4) for using his mobile phone to look up women's skirts in Kinokuniya bookstore at Ngee Ann City.

Lim Jia Jun was sentenced to nine weeks' jail after pleading guilty to one charge of voyeurism. Two other charges were taken into consideration.

He also received an additional 10 days' jail for breaching a remission order. The court heard that he reoffended one week after being released from prison.

Lim was in the self-enrichment section of the bookstore on Oct 30, 2020, when he saw a woman wearing a dress and formed the intention to take an upskirt photograph of her.

After standing behind a nearby bookshelf for a few seconds, he approached the victim with his phone hidden under his left arm. The woman was facing a bookshelf and he stood diagonally behind her, facing the opposite way.

He squatted down behind the victim and transferred his phone to his right hand. He then stuck his hand out beneath her dress with the phone's camera facing up.

These actions were captured by the store's CCTV camera.

At that point, a male employee of Kinokuniya walked by and saw Lim retracting his phone quickly from under the woman's dress.

Suspicious, the staff member followed Lim and saw him crouch near another woman wearing a dress in another section of the bookstore. The employee shouted and questioned Lim, leading to his arrest.

The prosecution sought at least 10 weeks and 10 days' imprisonment, highlighting Lim's history of offending. He was previously convicted of two sets of similar offences and jailed for 16 weeks.

Although no upskirt photographs or videos were taken in this case, this was fortuitous and could easily have turned out otherwise, added the prosecutor.

In mitigation, the defence lawyer said that Lim has not reoffended since October 2020 and was "contrite". He also changed his phone to one without a camera to reduce the risk of offending.

The lawyer also highlighted that Lim committed the acts opportunistically and on the spur of the moment, without a high degree of planning.

Lim committed the offences in the middle of a bookstore and did not consider that the risk of being caught was high, said the lawyer, who distinguished this from a scenario where the offender followed the victim to a more secluded area.

The prosecution countered that Lim's actions were nonetheless deliberate, and that he sought to avoid detection.

Lim could have been jailed for up to two years, fined and caned.