A man recorded seven revealing videos of a 16-year-old boy pleasuring himself in a toilet cubicle in Causeway Point, even though he knew that the boy did not consent to this.
When caught, he told the police that he was merely gathering evidence of the teenager littering, according to a court judgement on 16 Feb.
Source: Amanz on Unsplash. Photo for illustration purposes only.
Tan Wei Sien, a cleaner, was in a male toilet on level 1 of Causeway Point in the evening of 17 Oct 2024, the court heard.
The victim, a Secondary Four student in school uniform who was not known to Tan at the time, was inside the “most spacious cubicle with a handrail” in the same toilet.
Source: Google Maps
He had eaten a packet of rice while seated on the toilet seat, then started to masturbate while watching “inappropriate videos” on his phone.
While engaged in the act, the victim saw a hand reach under the partition from the adjacent toilet cubicle.
The hand mimicked the act of masturbation, and the person in the adjacent cubicle asked him whether he “wanted or not”.
When the teenager looked at the reflection on the floor, he also realised that the person in the adjacent cubicle had also started masturbating. This made him feel “uneasy” and “uncomfortable”.
At one point, the person in the adjacent cubicle knocked on the door of the victim’s cubicle, but the boy said “no” a few times.
The victim recorded a five-second video of the hand gesture, and also reported on the National Anti-Violence and Sexual Harassment Helpline (NAVSH) website that he had been sexually harassed.
The victim subsequently left the toilet, but left his wallet behind.
When he returned to the toilet retrieve it, he saw Tan still there, staring at him.
He was able to identify Tan as the person in the adjacent cubicle from his shoes and bag.
Source: DenBoma on Canva. Photo for illustration purposes only.
The boy then went to another toilet to adjust his belt when Tan entered the second toilet.
Scared, the victim took a photo of Tan washing his hands and ran away, because he “didn’t want [Tan] to do anything to [him]”.
Even in the mall, the teenager panicked after noticing Tan “walking towards” him, and eventually walked faster and lost him.
The victim was called by a police officer while still in Causeway Point, and met the officer outside Burger King.
He showed the officer the video and photo of Tan.
Tan was arrested in the mall on the same night, and his phone was seized.
In the phone, police found seven videos, each seven to 11 seconds long, of the victim seated on the toilet with his private parts exposed, touching himself.
They were taken by a person who stood on the toilet bowl with his bare feet and moved his phone camera slowly above the partition.
Source: Akshay Srivastava on Canva. Photo for illustration purposes only.
When Tan was questioned by the police the next day, he said he was inside the toilet cubicle when he heard someone throwing a packet of rice onto the floor in the adjacent cubicle.
He also smelt food, and felt this was “unusual and inappropriate for a toilet setting”.
Thus, he decided to investigate by peering over the partition between the cubicles.
When he saw the victim pleasuring himself, he recorded him with his phone “to gather evidence of his act of masturbation”.
He then reached beneath the partition to gesture to him, in order to “inquire if he was masturbating”.
He repeated this “inquiry” before the boy put on his trousers and left.
After the boy left, Tan decided to follow him “to determine if he would attempt to masturbate in another toilet”, he added.
When he saw the boy entering another toilet, he decided to follow him as he “wanted to determine if he would continue to litter”.
The boy fled after seeing Tan, who was later stopped by police officers.
Though Tan acknowledged in his statement that it was wrong of him to record the victim, he maintained that he merely intended to gather evidence of the boy littering by throwing food and rubbish inside the cubicle.
As he works as a cleaner, he feels strongly about cleanliness matters, he explained, adding:
When I see someone acting irresponsibly by throwing food onto the ground, I feel angry about their behaviour, as they seem not to care about the cleaners who must clean up their mess.
However, District Judge Koo Zhi Xuan noted at the hearing that there was no sign of any litter being thrown in the videos, which “deliberately focused” only on the victim and his sexual act.
Even if Tan really suspected the victim of littering, the judge said:
There was thus absolutely no reasonable cause for the accused to take multiple videos of the victim when the victim was still doing a private act in the cubicle with his private part exposed, and have these videos kept in the phone after the event despite the fact that the videos did not capture the victim littering at all.
Sentencing Tan to six months in prison, Judge Koo described him as a “shameless voyeur” who had “unlawfully infringed upon the dignity and privacy of a 16-year-old student in a public toilet in an egregious and persistent manner”.
This had caused “a considerable level of distress” to the victim.
Even in the presence of “overwhelming evidence”, he had displayed “an utter lack of remorse and introspection” by continuing to deny his wrongdoing, the judge said.
Tan has filed an appeal against the verdict and is currently out on bail.
Also read: Teen gets probation for secretly photographing patrons in Parkway Parade men’s toilets
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Featured image adapted from Amanz on Unsplash and Google Maps. Photo on the left for illustration purposes only.