Ex-company V-P jailed over upskirt images

For nearly 10 years, the vice-president of a company dealing with transportation used an array of devices to capture sexually compromising images of 11 women, including family members and subordinates.

The 58-year-old man, who was sacked when police started their investigations, used mobile phones as well as digital and spy cameras to commit his offences from 2007 to October 2016.

His victims included three of his wife's younger sisters, her brother's wife and four subordinates. Another three of his victims were unknown.

The man, who cannot be named due to a gag order to protect his victims' identities, was jailed for a year yesterday after pleading guilty to 28 counts of insulting a woman's modesty.

He also admitted to one count of disposing of two recording devices which could be produced as evidence of his offences. Seventy-nine other charges were considered during sentencing.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Eunice Lau said the man also had a "fetish" for using editing software Photoshop to tweak the images - replacing the heads of pornography models with those of his victims.

The court heard that viewing these modified images sexually excited him.

DPP Lau added that for the cases involving his family members, the man "capitalised" on his role as the family photographer to "facilitate his offending innocuously" during gatherings.

She told District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim: "As the accused had a ready excuse for always having his digital camera on hand, he shrewdly made use of this to take compromising shots of his female relatives under the guise of his role as photographer."

As for his subordinates, the man made use of his interactions with them during work meetings to obtain compromising images of them when they were seated.

His offences came to light in September 2016 when three of his colleagues - all men - spotted him holding his mobile phone in a suspicious manner near one of the victims on separate occasions.

The trio alerted their firm's head of human resources and lodged a police report on Oct 4, 2016.

After providing his first statement to the police, the man went back to his office the next day to obtain two recording devices and threw them away.

The court heard that one of the devices was shaped like a USB thumbdrive while the other looked like a pen.

Defence lawyer Roger Yek told the court in his mitigation plea that his client had cooperated with the police.

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

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on February 22, 2019, with the headline Ex-company V-P jailed over upskirt images. Subscribe