More often than most people would like to think, passengers on cruise ships fall prey to sexual

assaults by crew members.  Details remain sketchy

as the cruise industry hastens to tidy up its image,

but the outlines of the problem are beginning to be known.

 

Carnival Lines, the world's largest cruise line, reluctantly admitted in court in 1999 that its crew members had assaulted both passengers and fellow crew members 108 times from 1993 to 1998 – almost twice a month.

 

Twenty-two of the attacks were rapes, 16 of them involving crew and passengers,  the others involving crew members who assaulted fellow crew.  The remaining 86 cases involved unwanted kissing, touching and other improper advances.  Accused crew included a cabin steward, an assistant cook, supervisors, engineers and even a chief security officer.  As a result of the assaults, Carnival had fired 47 employees over the five-year span, the standard "punishment" in such cases.

 

It was a rape that led to the first crack in the industry's wall of secrecy.  A ship's nurse on the Carnival fleet's Imagination accused the ship's engineer of raping and sodomizing her in her cabin in 1998.  Cruise lines' standard policy was to wash their hands of involvement and make the victims decide whether to report crimes to law enforcement; some victims complained that cruise officials even pressured them against contacting police authorities. 

 

That is what the nurse says happened in her case: she told ship's security about the rape, but ship officers talked her out of filing an official report.  Instead, when the Imagination reached port, she went to the FBI in Miami.  Before agents could reach the man she had accused, however, another standard policy had stepped in:  Carnival had already fired him and put him on a plane to Italy, his home, where he remains free.

 

The nurse sued Carnival Cruise Lines.  When her attorney sought Carnival's records of similar assaults on board its ships, the cruise line refused.  A Miami judge ordered the corporation to release the information, but Carnival twice appealed the order, and twice was turned down.  It was forced to make the data public.

 

Contact our law firm for a free consultation. We may be able to help you fight back.

 

 

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