Seriously, again?: Police charge NUS undergrad for filming fellow student in shower

Men who secretly film women in showers are disgusting, pathetic perverts at best, but it takes a truly unique state of unmitigated stupidity to try and get away with the sick crime at the same university that is still dealing with the fallout of a massive “peeping tom” scandal that erupted the month before.

Police have charged a 26-year-old NUS undergraduate student, identified as Joel Rasis Ismail, with one count of criminal trespassing and one count of insulting a woman’s modesty for allegedly filming a 23-year-old student in the shower of NUS’ Raffles Hall.

Joel was arrested on Saturday soon after police were alerted to his crime, which they say took place at around 6:30am.

The 26-year-old was caught on tape committing the illegal act by one of the new CCTV cameras that have been installed in the university’s facilities the wake of the peeping tom scandal last month, According to a report by The Straits Times, the camera was installed just a day before Joel’s alleged crime as part of the wide-ranging security upgrades the university has made recently in response to the scandal.

In addition to getting caught on camera, police said Joel tried to cover up his crime with a quick change of clothes.

“He is believed to have tried to avoid being identified by changing his attire immediately after he had allegedly committed the offences,” the police said in a statement released today and picked up by Channel NewsAsia, adding that they suspected he had been involved in similar activities before.

The judge in Joel’s case approved a request from the prosecution that the suspect be remanded to the Institute of Mental Health for psychiatric observation.

This latest incident is the fourth reported case involving “peeping toms” at Singaporean universities since NUS undergraduate Monica Baey took to social media in April to denounce the way the university dealt with her case after she was filmed in the shower by another NUS student. The furor surrounding her case and NUS’ handling of it has been a major topic of online discussion, especially given the ongoing reports of similar cases still arising.