SINGAPORE - For a month, a cleaner hid a pinhole camera in a modified pole, broom stick or plunger, to film his stepdaughter while she was using the toilet.
The man would watch the recordings on his laptop before deleting them.
But his voyeurism came to an end on March 26 last year, when the 23-year-old victim discovered the pinhole camera hidden in the broom stick, and made a police report.
On Tuesday, the man was jailed for three months. He pleaded guilty to two charges of intruding on the woman's privacy.
This took place at the Housing Board flat they lived in, together with the girl's mother. The court heard that the victim had noticed her stepfather's strange habit of entering the toilet before and after she used it, for about one month prior to the incident.
During investigations, police seized a number of items the man had used, including the modified items and a computer. Two videos of the victim were taken 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. Ms Chen said the acts were difficult to detect, and it had been only by chance that the victim had spotted the camera.
In mitigation, the man said through an interpreter that the victim and her mother had left him after the incident, and that he was now divorced.
He added that he was suffering from high blood pressure and heart disease. He said he was seeing a counsellor and psychiatrist 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.
