A man who was originally given a mandatory treatment order (MTO) for trespassing into female toilets and filming women was jailed yesterday.
Diagnosed with voyeurism, Lim Keng Siong, 29, was spared a jail sentence in 2013 when he was placed on a two-year MTO, which entails psychiatric treatment in lieu of jail time.
The prosecution appealed.
On April 4 last year, Justice Choo Han Teck set aside the MTO and ordered that further evidence be given in the State Courts on Lim's condition.
While out on bail barely a month later, Lim reoffended.
He entered a female toilet at Singapore Polytechnic on May 12 and tried to peep at an 18-year-old student in a toilet cubicle. Yesterday, District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan accepted a senior consultant psychiatrist's evidence that voyeurism is not an impulse-control disorder.
Rather, it is a "sexual deviancy" because the person always has an "unfettered choice" as to whether to indulge in such behaviour, said Dr Stephen Phang from the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).
The judge considered Lim's remand at IMH and his mental condition before sentencing him to two months' and two weeks' jail on eight charges, the terms to run consecutively.
The then SIM University student had trespassed into a female toilet on campus on Aug 22, 2011, using a camcorder to film a 21-year-old student in a cubicle.
He used his mobile phone to film a 28-year-old housewife in a toilet in Jurong in October the following year.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sarah Ong said that Lim and other would-be offenders had to be deterred in the public's interest.
Arguing that the MTO was not a suitable option, she said Lim had reoffended repeatedly.
In 2005, he was given a stern warning. In 2011, he was arrested for similar offences and released on bail, but reoffended in 2012 while on bail. Lim could have been jailed for up to one year and/or fined on each charge of insulting modesty. The maximum penalty for criminal trespass is three months' jail and a $1,500 fine on each charge.
