Eric Wong: Perverted teacher jailed for secretly filming his students’ skirts. WAIVES his sentence
A teacher jailed for secretly filming up the skirts of high school students has been allowed to leave prison after a judge overturned his conviction on appeal.
Eric Wong, 29, was jailed for at least six months in July after taking 90 videos and 300 photographs of students in his class at Cammeraygal High School in the affluent suburb of Crows Nest on Sydney’s North Shore over a two-year period.
In quashing his sentence at Sydney’s Downing Center District Court on Thursday, Judge John North said Wong had a voyeurism disorder that would be better treated in the community than in prison.
Justice North said while it is “not an easy case”, he had concluded that, given the time already served, Wong’s mental health issues remained “unresolved” and required attention.
Eric Wong, 29, was jailed for at least six months in July after taking 90 videos and 300 photographs of students in his class at Cammeraygal High School in the affluent suburb of Crows Nest on Sydney’s North Shore over a two-year period.
“The impact on his life is profound,” the judge said. “He has lost his job and will obviously never be able to return to it,” Justice North said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“His four-year relationship ended.
“No matter what I do, people will be hurt by the breach of trust and the way these crimes were committed.”
Wong will be placed under an Intensive Corrections Order, which requires him to be of good behavior and accept treatment deemed appropriate by Community Corrections.
Wong was convicted after pleading guilty at Hornsby Local Court to two charges of filming a person’s genitals without consent.
Court documents at that hearing revealed that a 16-year-old girl became suspicious when she knocked a cell phone out of its hiding place and “formed the view … (it) was deliberately placed in an upward position and filming her.”
After students complained to the school, police seized hundreds of voyeuristic images of students in Wong’s possession.
Justice North said Wong had “grossly breached” the rules trust of young women under his care.
Cammeraygal High School, where a student noticed a device belonging to Wong aimed to film voyeuristic images
Wong was jailed after pleading guilty to two charges of filming a person’s genitals without consent
Wong’s lawyer Peter Givorshner told the court that the original sentence did not take into account his autism spectrum disorder and voyeurism disorder, with both things reducing his moral culpability.
Mr Givorshner argued that people with autism were “differently programmed” and that the judge was incorrect when he said Wong must have known his behavior was “completely inappropriate”.
Mr Givorshner said voyeurism disorder can be treated in the community.
He argued that his client had already been thoroughly publicly shamed due to the “intense media coverage” of the case, which would affect all his future prospects, including finding another job.