A 26-year-old man has faced a conditional warning by the police after he was caught while peeping inside the ladies toilet of National University of Singapore (NUS) where a woman was taking her shower. But, after two months, he molested another female classmate and this time, he was sentenced to nine months' jail and three strokes of the cane on Monday, July 30.
The unnamed accused pleaded guilty for insulting the modesty of a woman and molesting another female. The court heard that during the first offence, the man was outside the ladies toilet at one of the halls in NUS on November 25, 2015, at around 5 am.
Accused entered the toilet after hearing a 22-year-old woman's voice while taking shower and soon he went into another cubicle, next to the victim's and locked the door. Later, he claimed up and peeped from the partition to see the woman in nude. But, when the woman spotted that someone was watching her at that time, she shouted for help from her friends.
Mark Yeo, the Deputy Public Prosecutor said that the accused stayed in the locked cubicle until the security officer of the campus took a picture of the man inside the cubicle. The man later surrendered himself to the campus security and then the authority informed the police.
After that incident the man was given a conditional warning in February 2017 but, he committed another offence just after two months.
The court came to know that last year, when the accused was working on his final-year project in one of the university's computer labs on April 19 at around 7 pm, his 24-year-old classmate was also working on her project inside the same room. But, the woman wasn't alone, her boyfriend was also accompanied her. Later, at around 2 am the next day both the female student and her boyfriend fell asleep inside the lab.
Two hours later when the woman woke up, the accused tried to approach her and tried to touch her private parts. When the woman and her boyfriend confronted the man, he apologised to them and later the university authority informed the police.
DPP Yeo urged for a nine months' jail with three strokes of the cane and told District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim that even though the man was diagnosed with voyeurism and fetishism, these two medical conditions were not impulsed control disorders.
On the other hand, the defence lawyer Jason Lim, who was representing the accused asked the court to call for a probation report, failing which, he pleaded for his client to be jailed for eight months and fined instead. He also told the court that his client had a desire for cross-dressing and that his offences were not premeditated.
However, the accused has received a bail of $10,000 but, as the court ordered him, the offender needs to surrender himself at the State Courts on August 8 to start his sentence.
