The Straits Times 14 Dec 05
TEACHER JAILED FOR FILMING UP WOMENS SKIRTS
A secondary school teacher was jailed for six weeks yesterday for
using a hidden digital video camera to film up womens
skirts.
Loh T S, 28, a form teacher who taught English and Art at the co-ed
Boon lay Secondary School in Jurong, was caught at the Esplanade
Park on 21 Jan while trying to film a woman using a camera
concealed in a paper bag.
In court yesterday, the prosecution proceeded with one charge
against him and took three other charges into consideration.
Loh, who is married, committed the offences on four occasions
between 19 Jan and 21 Jan.
On the first occasion, at about 8.05pm on 19 Jan, Loh filmed up a
womans skirt while going up an escalator at Boon Lay MRT Station.
He did the same thing to two others on a train between 10.35pm and
10.40pm.
Two day later, he was caught when the boyfriend of a 22-year-old
woman he was trying to film at the Esplanade Park became suspicious
and demanded to see what was inside his bag. He called the police
when he saw the camera and realized what Loh had done.
In July, Loh was charged in court with intent to insult the modesty
of a woman by intruding upon her privacy. The penalty is a jail
term which may extend to one year, or a fine, or both.
In court yesterday, his lawyer AN submitted in mitigation a report
which claimed that Lohs voyeurism was a psychiatric
condition.
Dr Chua Hong Choon, a consultant psychiatrist from the Institute of
Mental Health, said the condition is characterized by repeated and
intense sexual fantasies or behaviors concerning the act of
watching an unsuspecting person who is naked, disrobed or having
sex, which has clinically significant distress or impairment in
work, social or personal functioning. Loh had been harboring these
fantasies for years, but acted on them only after he acquired a
digital camera.
In court yesterday, Lohs wife, who is five months pregnant with
their first child, submitted a personal appeal to magistrate May
Mesenas asking the court for a compassionate sentence.
She said she was surprised he had committed such an act and based
on what she know of him, she would accept that he did it out of
human weakness.
The principal of the secondary school where Loh taught wrote a
testimonial for him describing him as a dedicated teacher who had
no cause for the school to question his conduct or integrity in
his two years there. His pastor also said he was a faithful man of
integrity.
Magistrate Mesenas said in sentencing that she had considered some
aggravating factors: that there was more than one victim and that
Loh was a teacher in a secondary school.
It was the second such case this week. On Monday, a 29-year-old man
was jailed for four weeks for using his cellphone to film up a
womans skirt.
