Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

On Saturday, we published an article about a Princess Cruises captain molesting a girl during a cruise.  The source of the story was a newspaper article published in the U.K. called the Spalding Guardian.   We of course attributed the story to the Spalding Guardian and provided a link to the original article.  We also credited the photographers who took the photographs we used in the article. 

A website called Cruise Bruise also published a story about the same incident, and copied and  paraphrased large parts of the Spalding Guardian newspaper.  But instead of giving credit to the original article, Cruise Bruise gave no attribution whatsoever to the journalists who researched the information or the newspaper which broke the story or the photographers who took the photos in her story.  Instead, it wrote an article which made it appear that all of the information it published was the result of its own investigative journalism.  It then published the article with great fanfare, claiming that "we are the first to cover the case."  In truth, the Cruise Bruise article was regurgitation of the U.K. article.     

In grade school, most children learn that copying an article from an encyclopedia and calling it your own work is plagiarism.  It's deceitful.  In the world of publishing, whether it's a newspaper or blog, the same rules apply.  You can't write an article and then publish it without giving attribution to the original source of the information.     

Attribution is required whether the published material is text or a photograph.  Attribution requires that credit be given where credit is due, in order to prevent others from fraudulently claiming to have produced the work.

The publisher at Cruise Bruise, Jan Huggard, has published many articles about the cruise industry over the years.  She relies on the same Google e-mails alerts and Google reader applications as everyone else to find relevant content for her stories.  But unlike credible journalists, she gives no attribution to others as the source of her information.  She also plucks photographs from the internet and publishes them without credit to anyone.

Today I awoke to see Ms. Huggard writing an article criticizing the article we wrote on Saturday about the perverted cruise ship captain.  She appears to think that the story is her's alone.  She claims to be upset that we wrote about the age of the victim, claiming that it could somehow lead to the disclosure of the name of the minor.  A victim's age is not protected in the press or the legal arena and there is no possibility that the name of a victim can be revealed by mentioning an age.  As a practical matter, this child's age was previously published in the U.K article which was the source of her article in the first place and which she still has not acknowledged.  Indeed, the first sentence of the Spalding Guardian article states: "a 'world class' cruise ship captain from Donington has been jailed for nine months for sex offences against a 14-year-old girl while she slept in her cabin."

Ms. Huggard also complains that we asked Princess Cruises for a comment about its captain, and then published the information the cruise line provided.  Asking cruise lines for their side of a story is not something Cruise Bruise does.  While we ask for the cruise line's view of an incident like this, we have learned that you have to take what cruise lines say with a grain of salt.  In the end, it is the public who decides who to believe.  The problem is that Ms. Huggard omitted the fact that the victim was part of the captain's extended family, which the cruise line stated in its comment.  This of course does not justify the criminal conduct of the Princess captain.  In fact, this makes his conduct even more sinister.  But the information is a basic part of the story which Cruise Bruise decided to omit, undoubtedly to support Ms. Huggard's one-sided portrayal of the facts of this terrible incident.

What is behind this bickering between Cruise Law News and Cruise Bruise you may ask?  What Ms. Huggard knows but does not admit is that my firm used to advertise on Cruise Bruise.  But a few things happened.  First, Cruise Bruise's popularity nearly fell off of the charts (it is now ranked around 800,000 per Alexa).  As Cruise Bruise slipped into obscurity, it was forced to try to generate money with annoying pop-ups, spam, and Google ads including selling cruise line ads on its RSS feed.  Meanwhile, Cruise Law News became a top 10 law blog in the U.S.  Secondly, Cruise Bruise is, in a word, odd.  You will find no telephone or facsimile numbers and no street address for its site which is published somewhere in the backwoods of Arkansas.  It hides in anonymity.  Thirdly, and most, importantly, when it became apparent that Cruise Bruise was routinely plagiarizing newspaper articles, I ended my firm's relationship with this type of outfit.  Ms. Huggard was upset that I abandoned her ship.

There are few websites willing to take on the cruise industry.  Cruise Bruise is one of the few.  But it suffers from the same lack of transparency as the cruise industry.  Writing in a grandiose style about "exclusive" stories which, in truth, are based on information gathered and written by reputable journalists, is delusional.  More importantly, its dishonest. 

March 28 Update:  Our article is picked as one of the "Best in Law Blogs: The LexBlog Network" 

Credits: Logo courtesy of Cruise Bruise

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In 2003, Mrs. Dianne Brimble (photo below) was smiling and waiving when she boarded P & O's Pacific Sun cruise ship with her daughter for a vacation of a lifetime.  Less than 24 hours later, she lay dead on the cabin floor of fellow passenger Mark Wilhelm who had given her the drug GHB.  When he was finished with her and Mrs. Brimble lay unconscious, Wilhelm walked naked into another cabin of women - wearing only a life vest.  As Mrs. Brimble lay dying, he did nothing to summons medical help - instead he tried to convince other women to take the drug.

The criminal inquest into Mrs. Brimble's death revealed a cruise ship out of control, filled with lots of drunken passengers and date rape drugs and little law & order.  Watch the video entitled "Ship of Shame" which we posted in a prior article about the P & O cruise ship.  The press covered the testimony of Wilhelm and his seven traveling companions, some of whom characterized Mrs. Brimble in sub-human terms, as an ugly dog with bad breath.  One of Wilhelm's cruise buddies even entertained the thought of throwing Mrs. Brimble's dead body overboard.      

But the seven year legal saga following Mrs. Brimble's death ended last week as all cruise crime cases do - with the accused defendant serving no jail time. 

The prosecution dropped the manslaughter charges against Wilhelm and, in exchange for the deal, he pleaded guilty to the criminal offense of giving Mrs. Brimble the drug GHB which led to her death.

When the judge presiding over the case, Justice Howie, dismissed the manslaughter charges against Wilhelm he did not direct any comments to Wilhelm.  Instead, he chastised the media, accusing the press of adding to a circus like environment filled with what the judge called "prejudice" and "hysteria.''  The judge went even further - saying that "little regard had been paid to defendant Wilhelm's rights by the publication of a series of photographs depicting his 'unsavory' behavior on the night Ms Brimble died," as reported by Australia's Sun Herald.  He criticized the media for subjecting the defendant to "rumors, misinformation, supposition and conjecture." 

And so it should come as no surprise that at the sentencing hearing last week, Justice Howie decided to let Wilhelm walk free - even though he possessed an illegal drug and supplied it to Mrs. Brimble and she died because of the illegal drug.  No jail time.  No probation.  Not even a stern lecture.  Instead, the judge expressed sympathy and concern for Wilhelm, given what the judge described as "years of public humiliation."  The judge again depicted Wilhelm as the victim, who somehow had been punished enough by the media's depiction of him.  

"Justice" Howie gave Wilhelm a "get out off jail free" card.  And Wilhelm walked free from the courthouse. 

And in so doing, the "Justice" system failed another victim of a crime on a cruise ship.

Results like this leave everyone questioning the legal system, particularly when criminal trials are presided over by judges with misplaced sympathies for the defendant's hurt feelings and little regard for the dead or the suffering of their families.  

In an article in Australia's Punch entitled "The Evil Men Do And The Courts That Ignore It," David Penberty discussed "the plodding nature of justice and the persnickety application of the law – all these things may conspire to ensure that no-one faces any genuine punishment over that fact that a woman was left for dead in a drugged stupor on the cold linoleum floor of a cheap cruise ship."

We have discussed the lack of justice on cruise ships in prior articles.  Criminals on cruise ships walk free and the victims are treated like criminals.  Consider reading Cruise Ships Are A Perfect Place to Commit A Crime, And Get Away With It! and If You Are A Victim On A Cruise Ship, The Cruise Line Will Treat You Like A Criminal.

Mrs. Brimble's case presents a particularly bitter pill to swallow given "Justice" Howie's decision not only to let Wilhelm walk free but to lecture the media for its coverage of the inquest and criminal trials.     

The injustice of the Brimble's case and Justice Howie's misguided attack on the media pose the question - what is the role of the media in covering cruise crime cases? 

Should the lesson of the Dianne Brimble case be that the press was somehow culpable for portraying defendant Wilhelm in an inaccurate light?  Should news reporters refrain from publishing embarrassing information or photographs which may cause "humiliation" to a criminal defendant?   

Or is the lesson to be learned that the criminal justice system is no "justice" system at all when crimes are committed on cruise ships?  And that it is only the media and probing reporters that bring the true facts to light?

Mr. Wilhelm should be humiliated by his conduct.  He is at least alive.  He took his life vest off, put some clothes on, and went home.  He has the rest of his life to enjoy.  But Mrs. Brimble is dead and buried.  Her family has nothing but their grief, for the rest of their lives. 

It is the obligation of the press in free societies to publish the facts of a crime and all of the attendant circumstances no matter how "embarrassing."  Especially when criminals on cruise ships are never convicted and the only true facts will be investigated and revealed by the media.      

Credits:

Dianne Brimble         thepunch.com.au

Wilhelm in life vest           Sydney Morning Herald

Wilhelm walking free            AAP - Tracey Nearmy via 9 News

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Cruise Law News was the first in the U.S. to report on the death of  Nina Elizabeth Nilssen in Antigua on January 19, 2010.  The story was then quickly picked up by our followers on Twitter, such as CruiseCritic and CruiseLog.

Stories about crimes against tourists in Caribbean ports, as sad as they may be, serve an important purpose.  Many people have a false sense of security when they go on a cruise for a vacation get-away or a romantic honeymoon.  But the fact of the matter is that unlike sailing to Alaska, there is an increasing amount of violent crime in the Caribbean ports of call.  We have written about this problem, and the cruise industry's tendency not to warn passengers, in a prior article: "Crime in Caribbean Ports of Call Against Cruise Passengers."

In researching Ms. Nilssen's death, I ran across an interesting blog written by Cynthia Boal Janssens who is one the bloggers on the cruise website All Things Cruise.  Ms. Janssens is described as a "veteran cruise writer who is also a former president of the Society of American Travel Writers."   

Ms. Janssens was one of the passengers traveling on the ill fated Royal Clipper cruise in the Caribbean.  She wrote an article which mentioned  the wonderful wedding of  Ms. Nilssen's sister after the Royal Clipper sailed from Barbados. She described later taking a tender to the marina in Falmouth Harbour in Antigua.  She walked with her husband to the Pigeon Point beach where Star Clippers held a barbecue for lunch, followed by swimming and snorkeling from the beach. In her article "We Spend Tranquil Days in Antigua and St Kitts But Tragedy Upset Everyone," she commented:

Unfortunately, we learned this morning that a tragedy occurred late yesterday on Antigua and although I really don’t want to write about it, I feel I must. A passenger from our ship was found killed on the beach late in the day (not the part of beach that our group was on). The young woman had last been seen at 3:30 p.m. after being part of a snorkeling group. Of course, we do not know who perpetrated the crime and the ship was in no way connected to this reprehensible act.

Her family disembarked the ship that night and sailing was delayed by several hours. Word spread quickly through the ship yesterday morning about the crime although few specific details were known until later in the day. Just before dinner an announcement was made that a family had disembarked because one of their party was missing and asked that any passengers with information should report it to the police. Then we were asked for a moment of silence. All in our group felt that the ship’s officials should have been more forthcoming.

I think that this incident reinforces a fact of travel that we should never forget. That crime exists everywhere . . .

I was surprised  to read this because most travel writers tend to shy away from cruise horror stories.  Travel writers seem to double as travel agents or they don't want to offend the cruise lines which give them free cruises.  I thought to myself that All Things Cruise had done its readers a real service.

The article touched upon a real human tragedy in a sensitive and respectful manner while adding a warning, which perhaps the cruise line failed to provide to Ms. Nilssen in the first place.

I downloaded her article and tacked it on the bulletin board in my home office. 

So when I clicked back on the All Things Cruise website this morning, I was disappointed to see that the article had been re-written.  And the title had been changed to "We Spend Tranquil Days in Antigua and St. Kitts."  There was no mention of Ms. Nilssen's murder or any criticism of the ship's officers. The "tragedy" disappeared.  It is as if the murder didn't happen. 

A "tranquil" day in Antigua? 

Dear God. A young woman had just been murdered and her family devastated. "A tranquil day?"

I do not know Ms. Janssens.  She undoubtedly is a nice and caring person.  But why did her story change?  Did the cruise line ask her to change it?  Why did she decide that the story that she felt compelled to write and her warning to cruisers were no longer needed?  

The cruise industry's reputation has taken a beating over the years. Cruise lines create the fantasy of care-free vacations and romantic honeymoons in order to sell tickets. But they lack transparency and candor when things go terribly wrong. Travel writers who ignore the murders, rapes, and violence in the Caribbean ports are not doing the cruise industry a favor.

And they are providing a grave disservice to the next unsuspecting family who decides to buy a cruise to the Caribbean. 

UPDATE (January 25, 2010 afternoon):

Ms. Janssens' article has reappeared and is now entitled:  "We spend tranquil days in Antigua and St. Kitts but these are overshadowed by the murder onshore of one of our passengers."  Ms. Janssens also indicates in her article that she will be writing about how the incident was handled by the cruise line.

UPDATE (January 28, 2010 morning):

I spoke to Ms. Janssens and she left a short comment (below) explaining the situation.  As it turns out, her publisher took out certain paragraphs of her blog without her knowledge. When she realized what happened (she had been traveing) she insisted that the information be re-posted.   

Credits:

Royal Clipper                 All Things Cruise

Police in Antigua          Antigua Sun  "Police Hunt for Killer"

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