A Filipino resident in Hong Kong has been refused bail by the Eastern Magistrates Court as he was a repeat offender and had faced similar charges of loitering after he was caught walking into a women’s toilet.
According to the prosecution, this was the fourth time 44-year-old Eduardo Pakit, a bartender, had sneaked into women’s changing rooms or toilets on a beach or toilets in shopping malls to watch or to photograph women secretly, sunwebhk.com reported.
In the latest case, the prosecution said in a hearing on February 21 that a local woman saw the man inside the ladies’ toilet in Manly Plaza along King’s Road on February 17 and reported his presence to the building security. He was caught by surveillance cameras and the footage was uploaded to social media.
Magistrate Cheng Lim-chi rejected the defendant’s bail application at the recommendation of the prosecution, which said the man was a repeat offender who had faced three previous criminal charges for similar offenses.
According to local media reports, in 2016, he was charged and convicted after entering a ladies’ changing room in Repulse Bay and peeping into a cubicle where two teenage girls were changing their clothes.
But in 2015, he was acquitted by a judge in Kowloon City of loitering and peeping into a women’s toilet because the witnesses could not identify him positively.