Former labour relations officer sentenced to jail for voyeurism

A former labour relations officer who made over 10,000 intimate recordings of unknowing victims has been sent to jail.

Chong Hou En was sentenced to 16 weeks in jail in the High Court on Tuesday in relation to a number of offences, including filming family members of his girlfriend in the shower, making an up-skirt video, and possessing 10,574 obscene films.

The 29-year-old graduated from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Singapore Institute of Management) with a bachelor’s degree in business management in 2008 and worked as a labour relations officer, but it is not known where.

For his offences, Chong was initially given 30 months’ probation by a district judge in 2013; however,  that was quashed this week by Justice Chan Seng Onn, who described it as "manifestly inadequate".

Chong was first caught by the husband of one of the victims in 2011 using a mini-camera fixed on the tip of his shoe with Blu Tak to film an up-skirt video.

He was then arrested, and subsequent investigations uncovered thousands of obscene videos in his computer.

He had been convicted of five counts of insulting the modesty of a woman by intruding on her privacy.

In his 62-page written judgment, Justice Chan noted how, in his ruling, the district judge had placed significant weight on medical evidence that Chong was suffering from the psychiatric condition of voyeurism – in which people derive sexual arousal from observing intimate behaviours.

But Justice Chan went a step further – taking into account aggravating factors such as the high degree of planning and premeditation in Chong's acts, and the fact that there were multiple victims, two of them very young – and imposed a jail term of 16 weeks, following an appeal by the prosecution. Prosecutors had argued that a deterrent jail term for such offences was warranted so as to send a message to potential offenders, given the availability in this day and age of miniature and hidden digital video recording devices.