He filmed women changing through gap

A clothing store assistant used his mobile phone camera to film four female customers who were clad in their underwear in the fitting room.

But he was caught after another female customer spotted his mobile phone at the top of the fitting room partition.

Tan Wee Sien, now a 22-year-old full-time national serviceman, was jailed for four weeks yesterday after pleading guilty to two counts of insulting a woman's modesty.

Three similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

He committed the offences between May and July 2013 when he was working at a shop on the second storey of Orchard Cineleisure.

He filmed the four customers in the fitting room while standing on a ladder in an adjacent storeroom.

He also filmed a fifth victim undressing in a flat in northern Singapore.

Tan was caught on July 14, 2013, after a woman who was trying on clothes saw his mobile phone.

She shouted, put on her clothes and rushed out to confront Tan, who admitted he had filmed her.

Her boyfriend called the police. When the officers arrived, Tan had deleted the video of the woman.

However, the officers later seized Tan's laptop, from which they recovered several video clips of women changing.

When The New Paper went to the store yesterday, there was a gap between the 2m-high partition walls of the fitting room and the ceiling.

The store manager, who wanted to be known only as Danny, said the walls could not reach all the way up so as to accommodate water sprinklers on the ceiling.

He said Tan joined the store in late 2012 or early 2013 and was a satisfactory worker. He was fired on July 15, 2013.

The store has implemented measures to prevent the recurrence of similar offences.

"A female staff member will ensure that her male colleagues do not enter the storeroom when a woman is using the fitting room," he said.

In court yesterday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Jason Chua pressed for eight weeks' jail for each charge, stressing that it was not "a typical upskirt type of offence".

He said: "Whenever (Tan) saw a potential victim entering the fitting room, (he) would quickly go to the storeroom to move the ladder towards the adjacent fitting room wall.

"(He) took advantage of his position as a staff member of the clothing shop." said Chua.

Tan's lawyer, Mr Leslie Gregory Robert, told District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan in mitigation that his client was undergoing a course at the Specialist Cadet School.

Pleading for leniency, he said Tan has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and had acted impulsively at the time of the offence.

For each count of insulting a woman's modesty, Tan could have been jailed up to a year and fined.

This article was first published on April 16, 2015.
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