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A 31-year-old male accountant was sentenced to a 15-month probation order at Kowloon City Magistrates' Courts after admitting to a charge of voyeurism for secretly filming another man taking a shower in a public park changing room in Wong Tai Sin.
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Acting Principal Magistrate Andy Cheng Lim-chi adopted the probation officer's recommendation, remarking that although voyeurism cases generally warrant immediate custodial sentences, the court was prepared to grant the defendant an opportunity to turn over a new leaf.
Victim catches defendant red-handed and deletes footage from device
The defendant, Lau Chun-fai, pleaded guilty to filming a male victim, identified as X, inside the male changing room at Morse Park No. 3 on 26 July 2026.
The charge stated that the recording occurred in an area where an individual could reasonably be expected to be naked, expose intimate parts, or perform private acts with a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that the defendant disregarded whether the victim consented to being recorded.
The court heard that the incident unfolded when the victim was showering inside a cubicle in the changing room, where no closed-circuit television cameras were installed.
The victim noticed a bag placed beneath the gap under the cubicle door and inspected it after growing suspicious.
Inside, he found a mobile phone actively recording with its camera lens pointed directly at him. The victim immediately terminated the recording, stepped outside to confront Lau, and demanded the passcode to unlock the handset.
A check of the phone uncovered a video recording lasting 2 minutes and 36 seconds. The clip opened with a view of the defendant's face before panning across the changing and showering facilities, capturing the naked victim before ending as the bag was picked up.
The victim transferred the recording to his own handset and deleted the footage from the defendant's device in the presence of an accompanying friend, who witnessed the entire encounter before the police were notified.
Defendant cites unemployment and impulse before passing voluntary drug screening
The defendant initially remained silent under caution, but later confessed in a recorded interview that he had carried out the secret filming on an impulse following recent unemployment.
In mitigation, the defense submitted that Lau had voluntarily undergone a rapid urine drug screening on 29 October, which confirmed negative results for narcotics, and had proactively enrolled in a community drug rehabilitation scheme. The defense urged the court to adopt the non-custodial disposal proposed in the pre-sentencing report.
The magistrate pointed out that while voyeurism cases typically call for imprisonment and the dynamics differed from men illicitly recording women, the sentencing baseline remained unchanged.
He nevertheless accepted that a probation order was appropriate under the circumstances, sentencing Lau to 15 months of probation supervision.
