A crew member employed on the Carnival Valor pleaded guilty to possession of Child Sexual Abuse Material (“CSAM”) in a federal district court last week. Reza Heta Pratama, a citizen of Indonesia, was arrested in July of last year when the Carnival Valor docked in New Orleans following a cruise to Mexico. Carnival instructed Pratama to exit the cruise ship after terminating him due to sexual harassment complaints filed by coworkers. While at the Erato Street Cruise Terminal, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers discovered videos that appeared to be child sexual abuse materials on Pratama’s laptop and cell phone. A subsequent forensic examination revealed that Pratama used Telegram instant messaging service to receive child pornography from his aquitances. 116 videos and 54 images were on his devices depicting the sexual exploitation of minors, as revealed in a public filing by the prosecution.
Pratama waived his Miranda rights and admitted that he received and stored child pornography on his devices and showed the arresting officer his Telegram groups where he shared the pornography. Law enforcement’s investigations like this where they learn how child pornography is shared using Telegram and WhatsApp have undoubtedly led to the arrest of many perverts on cruise ships.
Pratama now faces sentencing in September for his crimes. He faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and supervised release which could extend to a lifetime.
Pratama’s arrest came just four days after Homeland Security officials in New Orleans arrested another Carnival crew member, Abdhul Rouvoof Shaik of India, for possession and transportation of child pornography after he disembarked a different Carnival Cruise Line ship, the Carnival Liberty. The arrest affidavit in Shaik’s criminal case (No. 2:24-mj-00105-DM filed in federal court for the Eastern District of Louisiana) states that crew member Shaik was a member of a group of men in a WhatsApp group who would share images of “children having sex.” He would chat with his friend from Indonesia and send and receive “porn videos” involving children. The Indonesian friend (likely Pratama) was referred to in the arrest affidavit as a “co-conspirator.” Shaik waived his Miranda rights against self-incrimination and admitted to the arresting special agent on July 14th that he knew the video included children and that child pornography was illegal.
It appears that crew member Pratama was directly implicated by Shaik and/or by transmissions on Shaik’s cell phone. Pratama was arrested four few days later, on July 18th.
Last July, we wrote about the arrest of these two Carnival crew members:
There have been at least twenty-nine (29) crew members arrested and charged or deported following arrests on cruise ships for possession of child sexual abuse materials in the last fifteen months. Earlier this month, we reported on one crew member being arrested and ten cruise ship employees being deported on charges of possession of child sexual exploitation. None of these crew members were publicly identified by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). These eleven crew members are in addition to the eighteen crew members who have been arrested and imprisoned during the same time period.
The eighteen crew members identified who have been arrested on child pornography charges have been employed by six companies: Carnival – 7; Royal Caribbean – 4; Disney – 3; Celebrity – 1; Holland America Line – 1; HAL – 1; and World Explorer -1.
CBP did a public disservice by not identifying the cruise ships where these eleven crew members were apprehended and by omitting their names and blurring their faces in the photographs it released. The public has the right to know where these pedophile perverts worked and were apprehended.
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Image credit: Carnival Valor – Mason Piscitelli – CC BY-SA 4.0 commons / wikimedia.