When no one else was around, a teacher in a secondary school secretly placed a recording device under his pregnant colleague's desk.

He'd noticed that she had worn a short dress to work and wanted to record upskirt videos of her.

When he was caught and his phone seized, the police found voyeuristic footage of a second colleague — this time recorded from the school's nursing room, where she had been expressing breast milk.

Wang Xianglin, 36, pleaded guilty to both counts of voyeurism. He was sentenced to seven months' jail.

The power bank

The Singaporean, who was employed as a physical education (PE) teacher at the time, had purchased a power bank with a camera function sometime in end-2021.

In February 2022, Wang had been performing exam committee duties with the first victim when he noticed that her dress was "quite short".

Later, at the staff room, he noticed that there were no other staff members around her workstation.

He then placed the power bank under her desk, securing it with duct tape and ensuring it was hidden from sight.

Wang subsequently left to teach a class.

Getting caught

Later that day, the woman rested her legs on a stool underneath her table.

Feeling the unfamiliar object, she bent down to retrieve it. Upon discovering the device, she reported it to the school authorities.

Forensic examination revealed that the device had managed to capture 17 minutes of upskirt video footage, including a clear image of her face from when she bent to retrieve the device.

In her victim statement to the police, the woman said that she had become wary of finding things under her desk, and of her male colleagues.

She also reported feeling "slight trauma from this whole ordeal" with "some degree of stress".

She had been in her third trimester of pregnancy at the time, the court heard.

More media discovered

But when the police seized Wang's mobile phone for forensic examination, they discovered that his voyeuristic act had not been a one-off incident.

A total of 13 images were found of another female colleague, who had been expressing breast milk in the school's nursing room.

Wang then admitted that he had used the same device to record footage in the nursing room across three separate occasions in November 2021.

He had used a green plastic bag to conceal the device, he confessed.

While the police were unable to recover the videos — only the photos — Wang admitted that he viewed the videos on his phone for his "own personal viewing pleasure".

He also admitted that he had taken the videos of her without her consent.

'Deviant fantasies'

In a further address, Deputy Public Prosecutor Tay Jia En countered the defence's submission that Wang had suffered from a voyeuristic disorder.

Instead of raising his voyeuristic tendencies with his Institute of Mental Health psychiatrist — which he had "ample opportunity" to do — he had elaborated on the "many stressors" he had been facing, such as his wife's pregnancy and the birth of his daughter.

A doctor's report commissioned by the defence also "stops short of showing that the accused was not able or substantially unable to control himself from committing the index offences", the prosecutor said.

Tay also noted that he had preyed on his "unsuspecting colleagues", and violated the privacy of the staff nursing room "so that he could satisfy his deviant sexual fantasies".

He pointed to the fact that Wang had admitted to masturbating to the voyeuristic photos of the second victim.

In response to Mothership's queries, the Ministry of Education said that Wang had been suspended from duty since February 2022 and is no longer teaching in any school.

"MOE takes a serious view of staff misconduct and will not hesitate to take disciplinary action against those who fail to adhere to our standards of conduct and discipline, including dismissal from service," the ministry said.

MOE has commenced internal disciplinary proceedings on the case.

Top image from Canva