An allegedly “outstanding” student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) admitted to violating the privacy of a female peer by illicitly placing a camera in her dormitory and filming her in the nude at the Eastern Law Courts yesterday, with the defense counsel arguing for leniency because of his “academic pressure”.
The defendant, 21-year-old Statistics and Actuarial Science student Cody Jims Ha, who secretly placed a camera in a fellow student’s room and recorded her in the nude three times, pleaded guilty to three charges of accessing a computer with dishonest or criminal intent.
The 21-year-old defendant recorded the videos in the undergraduate co-educational residential hall of St. John’s College between April and July last year.
The victim, 21, knows Ha from living in the same halls as him, but said she was not familiar with him as they lived on separate floors, HK01 reports.
The victim, identified in court as X, said she discovered a micro-camcorder on the bookshelf of her dorm room on July 7, 2016. On the camera’s memory card, X found videos of herself in the nude. The footage showed Ha placing the equipment in X’s room.
X told her boyfriend, who also lived in the same halls, about the issue and reported the issue to the hall’s staff and warden.
Upon confrontation, Ha reportedly told X’s boyfriend that there was “no need” for an investigation, and confessed to planting the camera. He was then taken to the hall’s staff and warden, reports Oriental Daily.
Under caution, Ha told police that he had placed camcorder in X’s room on three separate occasions — April, May, and July — and claimed he committed the crime on an “impulse”. Police officers found 13 videos of X on the defendant’s computer.
The defendant, whose parents both work in the civil service, was born in the US and returned to Hong Kong for his secondary school education. He is attending HKU under a scholarship for outstanding students and used to be the sports captain of St. John’s College.
In mitigation, the defense claimed that Ha showed symptoms of depression due to heavy academic and extracurricular pressure, needs medical treatment, and still has to face professional examinations.
The verdict will be delivered on July 14.
Those convicted of accessing a computer with dishonest or criminal intent face up to five years’ imprisonment.
Earlier this year, St. John’s College was hit by separate hall scandal after 20 undergraduate residents were accused of entering the dormitory of a male student — a candidate in an upcoming hall committee election — and pouring wax on his penis. Student publication The Pokfulam Herald reports that the candidate later withdrew from the election. According to reports, the assaulted candidate was campaigning to “reform” the hall.
In April, freshmen students from another HKU hall were criticized after a video showing them apparently sexually assaulting a hallmate went viral. Shortly afterwards, an anonymous post on a popular HKU Facebook page accused some students of “typical victim blaming” and shrugging off the “sick” behavior as “hall tradition”.
