Singapore PE teacher sentenced to jail for filming upskirt and voyeuristic videos of two female teachers

SINGAPORE, Sept 17 — When he noticed that his female colleague had worn a dress that was “quite short”, a physical education (PE) teacher at a secondary school decided to take upskirt videos of her.

To do this, Wang Xianglin taped a recording device underneath the woman’s desk while nobody was in the school’s staff room.

He also used the same recording device to record voyeuristic videos of another female teacher in the nursing room for staff members of the school earlier, investigations later found.

Yesterday, the 36-year-old Singaporean was sentenced to seven months’ jail after he pleaded guilty to two voyeurism charges. A charge of possessing voyeuristic images was taken into consideration during sentencing.

He will begin his sentence on September 30 after he was granted a deferment to settle his private matters.

Due to a gag order over the victim’s identities and they school, they cannot be named.

The court heard that sometime in end-2021, Wang bought a recording device that came with a power bank and a camera function.

On February 14 in 2022, Wang was on duty as part of an examination committee with a female teacher when he noticed that her dress was “quite short”, DPP Tay said.

When no one was around the female teacher’s workstation in the staff room at about 1.30pm that same day, Wang used duct tape to fix the recording device underneath her table.

He then left the room to teach a class.

DPP Tay told the court that Wang returned to the staff room around an hour later and noticed that the female teacher was sitting at her desk.

However, while the female teacher was at her workstation that afternoon, she rested her legs on a stool underneath her table when she felt a “rectangular device that was... not there before”, DPP Tay said.

After reaching under the table and discovering the recording device, she informed the school authorities who later made a police report.

DPP Tay said that the recording device captured 17 minutes of footage of the female teacher’s underwear, as well as her face when she retrieved the device.

In a victim impact statement to the police, she said that she has become wary of finding things under her desk and has “slight trauma from this whole ordeal”.

The prosecution said that during investigations, the police seized Wang’s mobile phone. In it, they discovered 29 voyeuristic images, of which 13 were of another female teacher.

DPP Tay said that the voyeuristic images that were forensically recovered from Wang’s mobile phone were “not original images”. Court documents did not state why the videos could not be recovered.

Wang admitted to the police that he had placed the recording device inside a green plastic bag in the nursing room on at least three occasions in November 2021.

He would retrieve the device from the bag before leaving the school at the end of the work day and download the videos from the device later.

These videos showed the female teacher’s breasts as she was pumping breast milk. Wang admitted that he would view the videos on his mobile phone for his “own personal viewing pleasure”.

DPP Tay sought a jail term of six to nine months, noting that Wang had shown a “sustained pattern of conduct” by filming the female teacher in the nursing room multiple times.

His actions to film his colleague by pasting a recording device under her table also showed that he was “emboldened to offend again”, DPP Tay said.

In response to queries from TODAY, the Ministry of Education (MoE) said that Wang had been suspended from service since February 2022 and is no longer teaching in any school.

“MoE takes a serious view of staff misconduct and will not hesitate to take disciplinary action against those who fail to adhere to our standards of conduct and discipline, including dismissal from service.”

The ministry added that it has started on internal disciplinary proceedings for this case.

For each voyeurism charge, Wang could have been jailed for up to two years, fined, caned or been given any combination of the three punishments. — TODAY