A 36-year-old Filipino engineer has been sentenced to four months in prison by a Singapore court after he was found guilty of intruding the privacy of women by secretly taking upskirt video of them at train stations.
Jan Benedict Mendoza Fuellas on April 10 was jailed for 16 weeks after pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to intrude into the privacy of a 26-year-old female victim at Bukit Panjang MRT station, along with seven charges of intruding into privacy of unknown women at different MRT stations last August.
Court records show that a 24-year-old Singaporean was taking an escalator at Bukit Panjang MRT station at about 7:20pm on August 19 when he saw Fuellas standing very close to the victim with his mobile phone on his lap. Upon noticing the act, the concerned man approached Fuellas and managed to disrupt his activity while alerting the victim. The duo cornered Fuellas who was later turned over to the control station.
The witness informed the station master of his suspicions and urged him to check Fuellas’ mobile phone.
The station master, upon delving deeper into the suspect’s mobile phone, found several indecent videos encrypted with a password. Fuellas later provided the password to decrypt the video files. A total of 38 upskirt videos of women taken at various MRT stations was extracted from the phone.
Thirty-one similar charges were taken into consideration in sentencing, according to the Straits Times.
The maximum penalty for insulting modesty is one year’s jail and a fine per charge.