SINGAPORE: A 49-year-old man was sentenced to three years in jail on Thursday (Dec 14) after he pleaded guilty to a charge of using a mobile phone to record an upskirt video without consent and nine charges of intruding upon the privacy of a woman. A total of 42 other similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
The man, a director of an information technology firm, took dozens of upskirt and down-blouse photos and videos of at least 52 female victims. His victims constituted colleagues and strangers. It was reported that Lee Lien Shuan often created collages of the female victims that included photos of their faces so that he could identify them easily in his computer files.
From 2002 to 2020, he took numerous upskirt and down-blouse photos and videos of his colleagues and strangers in public places without their consent. These were accompanied by photos and videos of the victims’ faces. Lee would then create photo collages with pictures of the victims’ faces next to their upskirt or down-blouse photos to identify them. If he did not manage to take photos of the victim’s face but knew who she was, he would search for her on Facebook and save the images of her to use for his collage. He would also add a watermark of his online user name to the photo collages and videos he intended to disseminate, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Jeremy Bin said.
Lee was caught on the afternoon of Jan 28 2020, when a woman was returning to her office from lunch, and Lee followed her. As she was riding up the escalator at Marina Bay Link Mall, he stood right behind her and held his mobile phone underneath her dress in an attempt to record an upskirt video. During this attempt, his hand brushed against the inside of the woman’s leg, and she noticed that he was trying to film up her legs. The woman shouted for help. A male passerby and security officer managed to restrain and detain Lee. While they waited for the police to arrive, the security officer took Lee’s phone away after he noticed that Lee was trying to delete his recorded content.
For each charge of using his mobile phone to record an upskirt video, Lee could have been jailed for up to two years, fined or caned, or punished with any combination of the three. For each charge of intruding upon the privacy of a woman, he could have also been jailed for up to one year or fined or caned.
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