A former photographer at the National Dental Centre of Singapore (NDCS), Elgin Ng, a 29-year-old Singaporean, was sentenced to two years and three months’ jail on Tuesday, December 9, for taking over 600 voyeuristic photos of 25 female patients. Ng pleaded guilty last month to nine charges, including voyeurism, distributing voyeuristic images, and unauthorised computer access, with an additional 21 charges taken into consideration for sentencing.
Ng’s primary professional duty involved photographing the teeth and jaws of patients scheduled for jaw surgery. However, the court heard that he deliberately breached protocol by taking unauthorised, voyeuristic photos of the female patients’ chests, utilizing both top-down and bottom-up angles.
NDCS protocol required Ng to uphold patient modesty and safety. This included providing patients with a blue board to cover their chest, regardless of gender, and mandating that a female colleague be present for female patients, or alternatively, that the room’s curtains be kept open. Ng systematically violated these safeguards while committing his offenses.
The crimes took place between June 2021 and May 2024. During this period, Ng targeted girls and women he found attractive, taking numerous unauthorised voyeuristic photos. If a patient was not actually scheduled for a photography session, he would lie, claiming the dentist had specifically requested the photos, thereby manipulating them into the session.
To identify and categorize his victims, Ng also illegally accessed the NDCS’s internal system to download photos of the victims’ faces. He then used these facial photos to match them to the voyeuristic shots he had taken, assembling a detailed catalogue of his victims, who ranged in age from 13 to 38, identified by their names and profile pictures. Disturbingly, Ng also sent some of the voyeuristic images to his friend on the Telegram messaging platform on at least two occasions.
Ng’s activities were uncovered when an 18-year-old victim lodged a complaint in April 2024. The victim had grown suspicious after being repeatedly called down for photography sessions despite having no such order from her attending doctor. Ng had taken a total of 31 such photos of this particular victim.
Following the complaint, NDCS launched a formal inquiry. Ng resigned from his position before he could provide his version of events. Subsequently, the centre filed a police report and took immediate steps to enhance patient safety by tightening its photography process, mandating that chaperones be present with patients, and implementing more regular audits of access to dental records.
During sentencing submissions, the prosecutor sought a jail term of at least two years and five months. The defense lawyer, however, argued for a lighter sentence of 14 months and three weeks. The defense attempted to mitigate the offenses by arguing that the victims’ cleavage was clothed and that bottom-up angles were less invasive than top-down shots, given that members of the public can see the area. The defense also compared the number of victims against the thousands of patients Ng had seen in his role.
District Judge Ng Cheng Thiam on Tuesday rejected the mitigation plea submitted on Ng's behalf. He explicitly agreed with the prosecution's sentencing submissions, noting the gravity of the case where the offenses were committed by the accused within a public setting, involving a gross breach of trust.
The penalties for the crimes committed are severe. For voyeurism, an offender faces up to two years’ jail, a fine, caning, or any combination. For distributing voyeuristic images, the penalty is up to five years’ jail, a fine, caning, or any combination. For accessing data without authority, the penalty is a fine up to S$5,000 or up to two years’ jail, or both.
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