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First image of vile taxi driver who secretly recorded student in shower
https://www.sundayworld.com/crime/irish ... 98160.html
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Pervert who filmed student in shower and spent months harassing her back behind wheel of taxihttps://www.sundayworld.com/crime/irish ... 12882.htmlA pervert who secretly filmed his student tenant while she showered and then spent months harassing her was back behind the wheel of a licensed taxi this week.
Le Wang (42) was given a suspended sentence for his “disgraceful” harassment of the female just days before we captured these images, on Tuesday last, of him motoring around leafy south Dublin in the vehicle.
Shockingly, unsuspecting female passengers who checked Wang’s credentials on the Driver Check app would have had no reason not to get in his car — as his plate number and registration details show his Small Public Service Vehicle Licence remains active.
This is despite the fact that gardai, as the licensing authority, have the power “at any time, to revoke a licence if [they] are satisfied that the holder of the licence is no longer a suitable person to hold a licence”.
Under the Taxi Regulation Act 2013, the licensing authority is mandated to consider the need to ensure the safety and welfare of passengers in SPSVs and other road users, and consider any conduct by the licence holder “which calls into question the holder’s suitability to hold the licence”.
When confronted about his continued driving of a taxi on Friday, Wang admitted to the Sunday World that he had received a notice from gardai informing him that the status of his licence is now “under consideration”.
“I go to the Garda station today,” Wang told our reporter.
“They talked about these things. They sent a letter to me already … it said they are considering this.”
When asked whether he believes, given his conviction, that he should still be driving a taxi, Wang replied: “I don’t know. The garda station decide it. Not me.”
Asked if he would confirm that he had been driving the taxi since his conviction, Wang claimed: “I had to pick up my wife and kids. I need a car.”
Asked if he is allowed to drive the taxi for work, pending the garda decision on his licence status, he responded: “Yeah, I think so. The PSV licence is still active, yeah.”
When then asked whether he will use the taxi to work, he responded: “I don’t know.”
Wang declined to comment about his conviction when asked, responding: “No. You should already know all of it. It’s been in all the newspapers.”
A spokesperson for the National Private Hire and Taxi Association told the Sunday World, after we contacted them about Wang’s continued use of his taxi, that the Association “does not believe it appropriate that he continues to be the holder of an SPSV licence”.
On Thursday of last week, four days before we photographed him back behind the wheel, Wang was given a suspended sentence of 16 months for the offence of harassment.
He had pleaded guilty to harassing a foreign student over three months between December 2022 and March 2023.
At a sitting of Dublin Circuit Criminal Court three weeks ago, Judge Martin Nolan remanded Wang in custody for a fortnight “to think about what he did” while he considered his verdict.
On his return to court, Judge Nolan described Wang’s behaviour as “disgraceful” but said he didn’t deserve a longer stay in prison.
He did, however, order Wang not to communicate with or about the injured party in any way for the next ten years.
Judge Nolan said Wang had videoed the woman twice in the shower and was attempting to do it a third time when the woman noticed the phone.
Wang had hidden the phone in a laundry basket, balanced on clothes at the foot of the bathtub, the court heard.
She immediately brought it to the attention of Wang’s wife, who said her husband must have put it there by accident and gave it back to him.
Wang overheard the conversation and heard the student crying, the court heard.
That evening, he sent her a series of text messages to the effect that she had to move out the next day.
The messages also contained the following threats: “If you make a big deal out of what happened tonight and ruin my family, I have a way of ruining your reputation. You better pretend nothing happened tonight.”
The student moved out that evening. Wang’s wife later rang the injured party and told her she had looked through her husband’s phone and found many videos of her on it.
In the months that followed, Wang tried to contact the student through several social media apps, including WhatsApp and WeChat, a messaging app used by the Chinese community.
The woman always tried to block his contact, and after 18 incidents of attempted conversations, the harassment ended on March 11, 2023.
Gardai seized the man’s phone and found two videos of the woman naked in the shower, taken on December 5 and 10, 2022.
Garda Kane said the videos had been deleted and then restored, and photos had been screenshotted from them and shared to Wang’s own WeChat app.
Wang has no previous convictions.
Garda Kane agreed with Marc Murphy BL, defending, that there was no suggestion that the images or videos had been shared with anyone else.
The court heard that Wang cooperated fully with gardai and seemed to suggest to them that his behaviour had been an extraordinary misjudgement or a “moment of madness”.
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