SINGAPORE: Over at least four years, a medical student-turned-doctor took more than 3,000 upskirt videos of female students from his junior college and later of nurses and colleagues at the hospitals he worked at.
Chu Ben Wee, 28, hid GoPro cameras in what he considered his "special shoes" to carry out the offences on hundreds of women. This is one of the most prolific serial upskirt cases in Singapore, the prosecution said.
AdvertisementAdvertisementThe National University of Singapore graduate was sentenced to three years' jail on Friday (Dec 11) for four counts of insulting a woman's modesty. Another 13 charges were taken into consideration.
The court heard that Chu was a student at Raffles Junior College (RJC) between 2009 and 2010 and later graduated with a medical degree in 2016, going on to work as a medical officer at two different hospitals.
His offences took place between 2009 and 2019, with gaps in between. He began taking videos in his junior college years, capturing 666 clips in 2009 and 2010.
His modus operandi included a pair of black sports shoes, which he would cut holes in at the front. He then concealed GoPro cameras in the shoes, aligning the lenses to the cut holes, and downloaded applications linked to the cameras that gave him live feeds on his phone. This set-up allowed him to control the camera's functions through the app.
AdvertisementAdvertisementWhenever he wanted to film upskirt videos, he wore what he refers to as his "special shoes" and followed women he found attractive or were suitable targets.
Generally, he targeted women in short skirts or dresses in their late teens or up to 30 years old. He would follow them closely after observing that they were wearing only underwear and not shorts under their skirts, and position his foot underneath to capture the videos.
Back home, Chu would transfer the videos to a hard disk and tag them with information such as their names, estimated ages, race, colour or type of underwear and other clothing.
When he had the urge to masturbate, he would do so while watching the videos.
AdvertisementWhen he began working as a doctor, Chu targeted nurses and female colleagues in two hospitals using the same modus operandi.
THE FIRST ARREST
In January 2018, he was taking upskirt videos at a store in Novena Square 2 when the victim felt something make contact with her ankle and turned to see Chu.
She observed him and suspected that he was using something other than his phone to record upskirt videos of her, so she squatted down and pretended to browse items on a lower shelf.
When she did so, she noticed the camera hidden in Chu's shoe and immediately confronted him, shouting for help. Chu was detained and admitted to police that he had taken upskirt videos of her.
He was arrested and a search conducted at his house, with police seizing his shoes and other devices containing at least 2,945 upskirt videos. Chu also identified the other 666 videos he had filmed while at RJC.
He was released on bail, but offended again while he was a clerk doing his national service. He bought more shoes, devices and a GoPro camera in April 2019 and filmed upskirt videos at various locations for a week or two until a victim spotted him in the act at Plaza Singapura.
He ran away but was later arrested. Of the 217 upskirt videos found on his devices, clips of 184 women went undetected and he was released again on bail.
THE JUNIOR COLLEGE FAIR
In July 2019, he saw on a junior college's website that they were having a career fair. He bought a PE shirt and long white pants that were part of the JC uniform on Carousell and bought the equipment for his video-taking before going down to the fair.
He walked closely behind a teacher and was not stopped by the security guard at the main gate. After changing into the VJC uniform in the toilet, he went to the canteen, where he concealed the GoPro camera in his shoe.
He then began recording upskirt videos of female students as he followed them to the school hall. Over the next two hours, he walked around the hall, targeting any female student who was wearing a skirt and letting the recording run so he could capture multiple victims. In total, he recorded 97 videos containing 309 separate upskirt incidents that day.
A female student noticed that Chu had walked slowly towards her friend in the school hall and kept pointing his foot forward while looking at his phone.
Suspecting that something was amiss, she and her friend watched him and noticed that he would walk very close to a female student before pointing his foot forward and lifting it up off the ground while looking at his phone.
One of the girls noticed a hole in Chu's shoe and suspected that there was a hidden camera. They alerted a teacher, and Chu was later located at a toilet. He had changed out of the school attire and claimed that he was from the Ministry of Defence manning one of the booths.
He eventually admitted that he was just a visitor and was arrested after a teacher called the police. He was subsequently remanded.
ONE OF THE MOST PROLIFIC CASES
The prosecutor on Friday asked for at least 37 months' jail, calling Chu "one of the most prolific serial upskirt video recorders to come before our courts".
"Such systematic and premeditated violation of women’s privacy at public places, in a workplace setting and most worryingly, at schools, inevitably causes considerable public disquiet and must be met with condign punishment," said Deputy Public Prosecutor Sruthi Boppana.
"In total, the accused took no less than no less than 3,260 intrusive videos of women over the course of about four years," she said. "He is one of the most persistent and frequent upskirt offenders to have ever reached the courts. The sheer number of upskirt videos he took, and the frequency of his wrongdoing, indicate a strong need for specific deterrence."
She pointed to how Chu took "special care" to disguise himself as a student at the JC fair and targeted young victims between the ages of 16 and 18.
While Chu was assessed by the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) to be suffering from a paraphilic disorder and major depressive disorder, there was no contributory link between his illnesses and his offences.
Chu had told the IMH doctor that he started watching pornography when he was in kindergarten while he was unsupervised. This continued in secondary school and he began filming upskirt videos when he was 17, usually when he experienced stressors in life.
Defence lawyer Luke Lee asked for a shorter jail term, saying that his client had first seen a doctor only after his January 2018 arrest, and that Chu is aware he needs to be treated.
When he recovers, he can return to be a beneficial member of society, said the lawyer.
For each charge of insulting a woman's modesty, Chu could have been jailed for up to a year, fined, or both. He was allowed to begin his sentence from Jan 9 this year, when he was remanded.
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