Cleaner secretly filmed stepdaughter using the toilet

SINGAPORE - Aroused after watching online video clips recorded by hidden cameras in toilets, a cleaner bought a pinhole camera at Sim Lim Square and hid it in various household items.

For a month, he hid the camera in a modified pole, broomstick and plunger, and filmed his stepdaughter using the toilet.

The 63-year-old man would watch the recordings on his laptop before deleting them.

His voyeurism came to an end on March 26 last year, when the 23-year-old victim discovered the pinhole camera hidden in the broomstick.

She kept the camera, moved out and asked her boyfriend to make a police report.

Yesterday, the cleaner was jailed for three months for making recordings of the woman using the toilet and showering. He pleaded guilty to two charges of intruding on his victim's privacy.

These incidents took place at the Housing Board flat they lived in with the victim's mother.

The court heard that the victim had noticed her stepfather's strange habit of entering the toilet before and after her visits, for about a month until she discovered the camera.

During investigations, police seized items the man had used, including the modified items and a computer. Two videos of the victim were extracted from the pinhole camera.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Star Chen said the way the man committed the offences suggested a great deal of premeditation and planning.

She added that the acts were difficult to detect and it was only by chance that the woman in this case spotted the camera.

The man told the court through a Mandarin interpreter that the woman and her mother left him after the incident and he is now divorced.

He said that he was suffering from high blood pressure and heart disease.

He added that he was seeing a counsellor and psychiatrist at a polyclinic for treatment, and was remorseful.

He could have been jailed for up to a year and fined for each count of insulting his stepdaughter's modesty.

This article was first published on January 07, 2015.
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