Pervert student filmed up skirts
ENGINEERING UNDERGRAD USED IPHONE FOR SEXUAL GRATIFICATION
A UNIVERSITY of Manchester student used his iPhone to secretly film up female students’ skirts for sexual gratification.
Doyun Kim, 20, placed his smartphone so he could record his victims around Manchester – on a bus, in shops and in university buildings.
But the engineering student was caught when his last victim spotted the device – with the camera recording – in a bathroom.
Police were called and officers found a series of videos on his iPhone X taken from underneath the skirts of his victims.
The London-raised South Korean national narrowly avoided a jail sentence when he appeared at Manchester Crown Court yesterday.
One of his student victims spotted an iPhone X with the camera facing upwards near a sink in a bathroom in November 2019, prosecutor Isobel Thomas told the court.
The device was partially covered with two small bin bags and toilet roll when she spotted it and noticed it was still recording.
She stopped the recording and, when she played it back, she saw the defendant’s face in the footage as he placed his device in the bathroom and hit record, the court was told.
The woman deleted the footage and called police. Police later executed a search warrant at Kim’s student home in Fallowfield. They seized his black iPhone X and sent the device to be analysed.
Officers uncovered a series of so-called upskirting videos.
The first clip was taken with the InShot app on the phone in September 2019. It was 1m and 24s of slowmotion footage showing the naked buttocks of a woman, shot from under her skirt.
Over the following days Kim filmed women’s buttocks as they were walking up and down stairs, up the skirt of a woman as she was bending over to pick up a pizza and in the atrium of a university building. He also made his perverted films on board a Magic Bus, in the stationery section of a shop and in a lift of a university building.
Analysis of his device showed he struck two more times in October 2019, once at the university and again at a student party.
He struck once in November 2019, managing to record the buttocks of a woman at WH Lung Chinese supermarket on Upper Brook Street.
Police arrested Kim in January last year and he refused to answer questions during his interview.
One victim described how she felt ‘really shocked’ when she was told and how she now checks for hidden cameras whenever she goes out. Another victim said she was left ‘angry and upset’ and was getting counselling. Two more victims said they felt ‘violated,’ the court heard.
Known as Eric to friends, the court heard Kim had no previous convictions and has sought expert help.
However, a pre-sentence report from the Probation Service concluded Kim had a ‘high risk’ of committing similar crimes in the future and a ‘medium risk’ of causing harm. His QC, Kate Blackwell, told the court her client had completed a ‘Safer Lives’ programme to address his behaviour.
The judge, Mr Recorder O’Donohoe, said he was ‘impressed’ with a letter to him from the defendant as it was ‘not self-pitying.’
He told Kim: “There’s a mistaken
belief this can be a victimless crime. It’s not.”
However, the judge said he was prepared to draw back from imposing a jail sentence as he said the defendant could be ‘managed in the community.’
Instead, he imposed a three-year community order and ordered Kim to complete 220 hours of unpaid work. He was also made the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.
Kim, of Sheephouse Way in New Malden, Kingston-upon-Thames, pleaded guilty to 22 counts of voyeurism and four counts of attempted voyeurism – where he recorded victims for sexual gratification – at an earlier hearing.