The Big Read in short: Voyeur alert!
A variety of innocuous items that can be used as spycams. Experts TODAY spoke to said the true extent of the problem of voyeurism is far deeper and broader than the ongoing NUS saga.
Each week, TODAY’s long-running Big Read series delves into trends and issues that matter. This week, we look at the extent of the voyeurism problem and the factors driving it, in the aftermath of the saga involving an National University of Singapore undergraduate who was filmed in the shower. This is a shortened version of the full feature, which can be found here.
SINGAPORE — Inspecting a changing room before undressing themselves. Double-checking for gaps in curtains. Steering clear of unattended baskets in the supermarket. Avoiding isolated toilets. Standing against the walls of a train carriage instead of at the centre.
These are some of the extra precautions women whom TODAY spoke to said they have come up with, to protect themselves as spycams and phone cameras take voyeurism to unsavoury new heights.
“This might be irrational fear and excessive caution, but it is better to be safe than sorry,” said one of them, a 27-year-old who only gave her name as Fiona. “We hear so many stories that hit so close to home, it’d be unwise to not be on our guard.”
Freelance content creator Hilary See, 27, said: “It is sad that we have to be on guard all the time. We are expected to be decently dressed but we still get preyed upon even if we ‘play by the rules’.”
Singapore has thus far been spared from the epidemic of digital voyeurism that has damaged many lives in South Korea.
But the furore which erupted last weekend over the case involving National University of Singapore (NUS) undergraduate Monica Baey, 23 — who was filmed secretly while she was showering in a residential hall — is a reminder that the Republic is far from immune to the problem, and that more could be done to protect victims of voyeuristic acts.
On the same weekend that the NUS incident went viral on social media, a 19-year-old man was caught allegedly taking photographs of another man showering in a male toilet at a Nanyang Technological University (NTU) residential hall was caught. This was the second case in four days which occured in a NTU residential hall, after a police report was lodged on April 18 against a 22-year-old male hostelite who allegedly filmed a fellow student while she was showering the previous evening.
TIP OF THE ICEBERG
Experts TODAY spoke to said the true extent of the problem of voyeurism is far deeper and broader than the ongoing NUS saga.
Unreported cases are common, said the experts who noted that published statistics are just the tip of the iceberg.
It was revealed in a written parliamentary reply in October last year that about 230 voyeurism cases involving hidden cameras were reported to the police in 2017, up from some 150 cases in 2013.
The authorities have moved to tackle the problem: The Criminal Law Reform Bill was tabled in February to address growing concerns over the surreptitious recording of people in various states of undress or intimacy — an offence which is not sufficiently covered under existing laws. It aims to criminalise the production, possession and distribution of voyeuristic recordings.
Should the Bill be passed in Parliament, voyeurs could face up to two years in jail, caned, and/or fined for each charge, and be slapped with an enhanced penalty if the victim is below 14 years of age. Current laws provide for only up to one year in jail, and/or a fine.
UNDERLYING FACTORS
The rising cases of voyeurism could be the result of people being exposed to excessive amounts of pornography online, among other factors.
A lecturer in his 30s, who declined to be named, recalled that during secondary school, he and his friends would, out of mischief, loiter at a shopping mall where the flooring had enough reflection for them to catch glimpses of women’s underwear.
Growing up at a time when not every home was equipped with Internet connection yet, he also recalled how he and his peers would dare each other to visit pornographic websites, which “secretly everyone of us was curious to see”, in a display of manhood.
Now, as an adult, he worries that things can get out of hand for today’s youths, given factors such as advancing technology and the unfettered online environment.
Criminal lawyer Rajan Supramaniam who has handled more than 50 voyeurism cases said more teenagers are coming to seek his legal help, while clinical psychologist Joel Yang said he is seeing one new case a month, on average.
For Dr Yang, quite a number of his clients are voyeurs who have not been reported to the police, and were referred to him by concerned parents, schools, or employers.
A few cases of individuals had also sought help on their own volition, such as a 32-year-old banker who was “triggered” to seek help after almost getting caught in the act at his new workplace. The man was afraid that his habit, if left unaddressed, might jeopardise his relationship with his girlfriend whom he had been seeing since his NUS days and does not know that he had been a voyeur since university.
Dr Yang said people tend to have stereotypical images of those who have voyeuristic tendencies — they are viewed as not very successful in getting the attention of people they find attractive, or have specific sexual fetishes.
However, he said, the issue cuts across all sectors of society, regardless of gender, education, and social-economic class, and most people who admitted to have such tendencies are normal-looking individuals, with good jobs and normal relationships.
A lot of it could be maladaptive ways of coping with stress or boredom, he said, pointing out that his clients had reported thrills of being able to “get away with something”, apart from them getting the physiological turn-on.
Dr Cheow Enquan, a consultant at the Institute of Mental Health’s Department of Forensic Psychiatry, said that based on his experience, people with a voyeuristic problem struggle with admitting it, given that Singapore is largely still a conservative society.
“This problem is viewed as shameful by many people. It is even more stigmatising when this amounts to a mental disorder and one has to seek treatment from IMH,” said Dr Cheow.
Underlying stressors could be financial or occupational in nature, he added, noting that not every voyeur has a mental disorder.
VOYEUR COMMUNITIES EMBOLDENING INDIVIDUALS
With the formation of online communities, such as the SammyBoy forum, more might feel tempted to seek out voyeuristic thrills for themselves, having been a covert consumer of such videos.
Nominated Member of Parliament (MP) Walter Theseira noted that there is a substantial number of netizens who consume such voyeuristic content and drive demand, even though they would never dream about taking part in the act of filming.
“Without active-passive consumption by the online community, people won’t feel so emboldened to take these films because the consumption helps to normalise the act,” said Associate Professor Theseira, who is from the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
This could be why the norm around voyeurism is “nowhere as strong as the social norm around, say, child sex offences or rape”, he said. “The rationalisation is that if a victim never finds out, it appears to be a victimless offence. This allows voyeurs to think they are not bad people.”
NTU assistant professor Liew Kai Khiun, who studies transnational popular cultural flows and social media cultures, said the current phenomenon could be a case of “technology-enabled toxic masculinity” — technology enabling men to project their control over women with the “male gaze”.
Education has a major part to play to address the problem, the experts said.
Dr June Goh, president of the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO), said: “It boils down to respect and understand that one’s body is completely a private space.”
A 29-year-old secondary school teacher who spoke to TODAY on the condition of anonymity meanwhile noted that there is no lack of educational programmes, but many parents are not doing enough on their part in educating their children on these issues.
During sex education class, she observed that her students were “learning more from their peers than from teachers (during those lessons)”. “Speak of masturbation, and the whole class gets feverish with excitement,” she said.
Parents should already have taught their children to understand that while men have natural tendencies to be visually triggered for instance, they are “more than” their animal instincts, she said.
She would tell her boys: “You are supposed to be a protector and defender, meant to lead the family unit. You need to learn how to manage your self-control, and know what areas to watch out for.”
