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A seventy-two year old man was reported missing on Monday morning from the Ruby Princess when it returned to port in San Francisco following a five day cruise to Mexico, according to numerous national and local news stations.

It remains unknown how the man went overboard or the circumstances which led to the incident. A spokesperson for Princess Cruises said that after staff reviewed video footage from the ship and searched the ship several times without success, it concluded that the guest probably went overboard.

The trade organization for the cruise industry, the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA), then quickly released its standard statement that all of its “careful” investigations following man overboards have always found, in every case, that the person going overboard allegedly did so either “intentionally” or “recklessly.”

This is a bold face lie. We have written about numerous incidents where passengers were thrown overboard, typically by the guest’s husband or boyfriend.

It’s a far-fetched conclusion that all four hundred and nineteen (419) people who have gone overboard in the last 25 years have either decided to end their life or acted recklessly on the cruise ship. The primarily cause of guests going overboard is excess sale and consumption of alcohol. Probably around 75% of passenger who go overboard do so after the cruise ship sells and serves them with an excessive amount of alcohol (say, 15 to 20 drinks). Yes, it may be fair to characterize drinking twenty drinks to be”reckless” but it is clearly reckless for a cruise line, particularly the “fun ship” Carnival, to serve that much booze to try and keep its onboard sales highly profitable. There is a direct relationship between excessive booze and overboard passengers (as well as violence) on cruise ships.

Suicides involving cruise ship passengers on cruise ships are relatively rare (and comprise less than 5% of overboard incidents). It is primarily cruise ship employees who decide to end their lives by jumping overboard, often due to long hours / overwork and a lack of emotional support over the course of long (six to ten months) contracts where crew members are away from their family and loved ones.

None of the news outlets which reported on this latest incident addressed the issue of why this ship did not have an automatic man overboard (MOB) system installed. Auto-MOB systems, required since 2012 by the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA), include the use of motion detection which automatically sends a signal to the bridge when a person goes over the ship’s rails and then tracks the person in the water using state of the art infrared and radar technology. These life-saving safety systems have been extensively tested and have been shown to effectively signal a person going overboard and then track the person in the water, even at night.

No Carnival Corporation owned cruise ships have installed such life-saving systems. To our knowledge only Disney Cruises and MSC Cruises (on one MSC ship, the MSC Meraviglia) have state-of-the-art MOB systems on their ships.

Over 250 passengers and crew members have been died at sea after going overboard from cruise ships without MOB systems since the cruise industry was require to install such systems in compliance with the CVSSA.

There have been eighteen people who have gone overboard this year from cruise ships. None of these ships had the CVSSA-required MOB systems. The last incident was five weeks ago when a guest went overboard from the Allure of the Seas which, like all other ships owned and operated by Royal Caribbean, did not have this life-saving equipment installed.

It is a shame that the cruise industry not only refuses to install life-saving equipment but always blames their guests irrespective of the true facts.

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Image credit: Man overboard – Richard Bosman Man Overboard (1981) New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA); Ruby Princess – nbcbayarea (screen grab); CLIA statement = nbcbayarea.

The Miami-Dade Police Department arrested a passenger who disembarked from an unidentified cruise ship at PortMiami last weekend on charges of “purchasing child sexual abuse material online.”

Miami-Dade Police arrested Nicholas Gardener, age 24, of Brampton, Ontario who was initially held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $50,000 bond for five felony charges related to the possession of child sexual abuse materials.

According to Local News 10 in Miami, the arrest report indicates that a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer searched Gardner’s phone and found three illicit videos and two illicit images which depicted girls between the ages of 5 and 8 being victimized.

There have been a significant number of arrests for sexual crimes on cruise ships by state and federal law enforcement officers in South Florida. At least seventeen (17) crew members have been arrested in a seven month period in 2024 for possession of child pornography on cruise ships returning to ports primarily in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

Crew Member Arrested for Child Pornography – 17th Cruise Ship Employee Arrested in Last Seven Months

The cruise crime data required by the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA) from the third quarter of this year (from July 1 – September 30) shows that sexual assaults on cruise ships rose to 38 from 25 (from April 1 to June 30). Surprisingly, Disney Cruise Line led all cruise lines with 11 sexual assaults and rapes in just three months. It is unknown to the public how many of these sexual crimes involved minors. (The cruise industry lobbied heavily to avoid having to disclose whether children were victimized while the U.S. Congress was enacting the CVSSA).

The CVSSA does not disclose when a crew member or cruise guest is arrested on charges of child pornography. The public is dependant on reports of the local news organization reporting these types of crimes.

Taking a cruise with your family exposes them to a significant risk of a sexual crime. Unfortunately, enforcement often is unduly concerned with the reputation of the cruise industry and does not disclose the name of a particular cruise ship when a sexual crime takes place.

The local news report of this crime (Gardener reportedly confessed) did not identify the name of the cruise ship. Last Saturday, six ships operated by four cruise lines were at the port of Miami: Icon of the Seas, Independence of the Seas, Norwegian Joy, MSC Seascape, Carnival Magic, and Carnival Sunrise.

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Image credits: Photo of Carnival, NCL and Royal Caribbean ships – Financial Times; Nicholas Gardener mug shot – Miami Dade Police via Local News 10.

A sixty-six (66) year-old passenger was reported overboard from the Allure of the Seas cruise ship north of Nassau, Bahamas last night.

Around 9:40 p.m. last night, passengers reported hearing an “Oscar-Oscar-Oscar” announcement. A rescue craft was reportedly deployed to search for the missing woman. The Allure used search lights on the dark waters to aid in the search. Another Royal Caribbean cruise ship, the Utopia of the Seas (mistakenly referred to as the Icon of the Seas by one passenger) aided in the search.

I have seen no online accounts from anyone who actually witnessed the person going into the water. Most postings on social media and news accounts refer to the person “falling” from the ship but there are no clear descriptions whether she accidentally went overboard or intentionally jumped.

The ship had a large number of Taylor Swift fans aboard. There were a number of people live-streaming after the guest went overboard.

@ashleytravels715

Man overboard #allureoftheseas #manoverboard #allure #royalcaribbean #bahamas

♬ original sound – Ashley S

According to cruse expert Dr. Ross Klein, this is the 418th person to go overboard since 2000.

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October 23rd Update: According to the Miami Herald, the missing passenger “fell from the Allure of the Seas ship around 9:40 p.m. . . . . The ship’s crews launched a search and notified the Coast Guard at 10:30 p.m.

October 24th Update:

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended the search for the overboard guest this morning.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 170 people on the Radiance of the Seas were sickened with diarrhea and abdominal cramps among other gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms. The CDC reports that during the last cruise (September 20th– September 27th), 167 out of 2,172 (7.69%) passengers reported being ill during the voyage on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Three of 894 (0.34%) crew members also reported GI symptoms.

The CDC did not list the type of GI infection. Of the last ten GI infections this year, seven cases involved norovirus, one involved E. coli and two were unknown. As usual, the CDC did not state how or why the outbreak took place and did not disclose the probable cause of the infections.

It is well established by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that the usual cause of a norovirus outbreak is contaminated food or water. Norovirus is also easily spread via airborne transmission. But the cruise line invariably blames their guests irrespective of the true facts.

Of the last ten GI outbreak cases on cruise ships, six involved ships owned by Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. (which involved ships operated by Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises).

The Radiance of the Seas has had two GI outbreaks this year alone, the last one occurred in April which involved the common culprit norovirus.

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Image credit: Radiance of the Seas – Fletcher6 CC BY-SA 3.0 commons wikimedia; abdomen – egeamedical.com.

Update: The number of infected quests increased to 180 of 2,172 (8.29%) with 2 crew members sickened.

An adult cruise passenger, identified as Yorkiss Yazbek Montalvo Ramos, age 35, of Reynosa, Mexico, was arrested last weekend on a charge of lewd and lascivious touching of a minor after he grabbed a 17-year-old male’s penis while they were onboard the MSC Seascape, according to Miami’s Local 10 News.


Miami-Dade police said the incident happened at about 3 a.m. after adult passenger Ramos followed the teenager into a public bathroom.

Florida is the only state in the U.S. where local law enforcement, in addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), has statutory jurisdiction to investigate crimes which are alleged to occur on foreign owned and operated cruise ships in international waters (as long as the cruise ships leave from and return to a port in Florida). State police officers from the Miami-Dade County Police Department and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and prosecutors from the Florida State Attorneys Office are far more likely to take crimes like this seriously than the FBI and U.S. Attorneys Office.

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Image credit: MSC Seascape – Rene Cortin CC BY-SA 4.0 commons / wikimedia; Yorkiss Yazbek Montalvo Ramos – Local 10 News.

Seventy-five people (65 guests and 10 crew members) were sick with gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms on the Arcadia cruise ship when the P&O Cruises ship arrived in the port of New York this week.

The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicated that 3.32% (65) of the 1,959 guests and 1.25% (10) of the 799 crew members were sickened. The CDC has not figured out what type of infection was involved.

75% of the outbreaks this year involved highly contagious norovirus. Of the 12 GI outbreaks this year, 9 incidents involved norovirus; one outbreak involved E. coli; and the causative agent for two outbreaks remain unknown.

As usual, the CDC did not arrive at a conclusion regarding the source and cause of the outbreak. The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have long stated that most norovirus outbreaks are caused by contaminated food and/or water. Cruise lines typically blame the passengers for the outbreak despite the lack of technical information supporting such a conclusion.

It is also well established that norovirus can be spread in the air, although no cruise lines respond to an outbreak by dispensing N95 masks.

The usual debate when a GI outbreak is announced involves the public casting blame on uncooked cruise line food and the cruise lines saying that the passengers failed to wash their hands. My thought is that you can wash your hands several times a day but it is not going to prevent you from becoming sick if the food is contaminated by ill food handlers and the virus is being transmitted through the air.

One of the shortcomings of the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) is that the CDC does not make an effort to determine how GI outbreaks occur. The CDC does not make factual, scientific determinations regarding the actual source of the disease transmission (i.e., a particular type of food and/or water and the location of the initial outbreak). This is probably due to the limited resources of the CDC and the quick turn-around of cruise ships in U.S. ports.

The cruise industry has no interest in actually determining why a specific outbreak takes place. Most cruise lines will always claim that a guest brought the virus aboard the ship and other passengers then failed to wash their hands. Neither the CDC nor cruise lines investigate whether galley staff and/or food handlers were working while infected. There is no analysis what the passengers, who became ill, last ate or were served during the same seating and/or by the same waiters. There is no tracking by cruise lines of illnesses due to the type of food served during the cruise. This is to be sharply contrasted with shore-side major restaurant businesses in the U.S. when a disease outbreak occurs. Chipotle, for example, has a reputation of determining the specific source of an norovirus outbreak and then focusing on the distributor which supplied the particular contaminated sprouts, lettuce or other food item.

Interested in this issue? We suggest reading the article After Years of Decline, Norovirus Outbreaks Surge on Cruise Ships and our article about a GI outbreak on another Princess cruise ship, the Ruby Princess, a little over a year ago:

Over 200 Sickened by Gastrointestinal Illness on Ruby Princess – U.S. Health Officials Now Boarding Cruise Ship in Galveston to Investigate

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September 24, 2024 update:

The CDC updated the number of ill passengers and crew members. 87 of 1,959 (4.44%) of the passengers and 11 of 799 (1.35%) of the crew have reported ill.

Photo credit: Arcadia – Pjotr Mahhonin CC BY-SA 4.0, commons / wikimedia; norovirus – User:Graham Beards at en.wikipedia

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested a cruise ship crew member, identified as Akshay Somaroo, for possession and importation of child pornography near Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, Canada according to Nunatsiaq News. At the time of his arrest, Somaroo was working on the World Explorer, a relatively small expedition cruise ship with a capacity of around 170 guests and 130 crew members.

The local news reported that RCMP officers boarded the cruise ship in Frobisher Bay to assist Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada officers with what were described as “routine” customs examinations. While conducting these examinations, this crew member, who reportedly is from Mauritius, was searched by CBSA officers and was subsequently arrested after he was found to be in possession of child pornography.

The arrest of this 31 year-old crew member brings the total number of crew members arrested for child pornograhy to seventeen (17) in just the last seven months. This is the highest number of such arrests since I began reporting about the cruise industry fifteen years ago.

Somaroo did not enter a plea and is scheduled to appear in the Nunavut Court of Justice on September 11th, according to a news release on the RCMP website.

Mystic Cruises owns the World Explorer which is currently chartered to and operated by Quark Expeditions and Nicko Cruises.

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Image credit: Akshay Somaroo in custody of Canadian sheriff’s office – Arty Sarkisian via Nunatsiaq News; World Explorer – Quark Expeditions

A federal court in Miami, Florida recently awarded pre-judgment interest in the amount of $2,134,229.90 (calculated at $1,157.93 per day) on a jury verdict awarded to a woman raped on a Carnival cruise ship. The federal court jury awarded $10,200,000 awarded two years ago (on July 18, 2022) after a crew member raped the young passenger on the Carnival Miracle. This news was published by the New York Post and the Daily Mail.

Facts Alleged By Jane Doe

The salient facts are contained in part in a decision by a federal magistrate who ruled on various pre-trial motions filed by the parties and reported in the case of Jane Doe v. Carnival Corporation d/b/a Carnival Cruise Line (USDC FL case number 19-247660) . , . In the pertinent parts, the decision states:

“Jane Doe was a passenger onboard Carnival’s vessel, (the Carnival Miracle), and in the early hours of December 2, 2018, she alleges that Fredy Anggara, a Carnival crew member from Indonesia, raped her in a storage closet.”

The complaint (lawsuit) which Jane Doe’s lawyer filed further alleges additional details, which include:

The incident occurred on “December 1, 2018;”

This was the “first cruise” of Jane Doe, a resident of the State of Washington;

“On the last night of the subject cruise, Jane Doe went up a stairwell. At the top was a CARNIVAL employee (see photo produced in discovery);

Once Jane Doe reached the top of the stairs, the subject employee lured Jane Doe into a (maintenance) closet. He went inside the closet with her, locked the door, raped her, and ejaculated on her;

Thereafter he unlocked the closet door and let Jane Doe leave;

Jane Doe immediately rushed away towards her cabin. The assailant caught up to her and asked her to allow him back in her room. Jane Doe declined his request;

Once Jane Doe reached her room, she burst into tears and told her friend what had just happened;

Jane Doe and her friend went to find help and report the sexual assault;

Jane Doe started hyperventilating and having panic attacks;

Jane Doe located employees of Defendant to report the crime;

The cruise’s staff members placed Jane Doe in a wheelchair and took her to the ship’s medical facility where staff utilized a rape kit and gave her medications to consume in order to fight sexually transmitted diseases she may have contracted during the rape;

Jane Doe was subjected to numerous episodes of humiliation following the medical examination where she had to walk through dozens of passengers who were waiting to disembark the ship. They were ogling her as she passed through them in just a t-shirt as she was not provided any fresh clothes to wear;

Following the cruise, Jane Doe followed up with CARNIVAL to see if the subject employee had been fired, if any disciplinary action was taken, and/or if he was arrested. CARNIVAL did not respond.”

The Washington Post covered the trial and and summarized the allegations and the victim’s damages:

“The lawsuit claims Carnival was liable for the rape because it failed to monitor dark, public areas of the ship where women could be vulnerable to assaults. It says the company should have exercised a level of reasonable care for guests because “on board its cruise ships there have been numerous assaults, batteries, sexual assaults and batteries, rapes, and attacks perpetrated by crew on passengers.”

In court documents responding to questions from Carnival Corp.’s representation, the plaintiff described how the alleged assault changed her life.

“I have depressive episodes,” she says in the documents. “I suffer from anxiety especially in public. It has affected how intimate I am with a person.”

“At my lowest point I thought of killing myself,” she says in the documents. “I had a plan. I went around to visit my friends and created memories for them to remember me. I also wrote everyone notes. I was hospitalized.”

Carnival’s Defense

During discovery, Carnival responded to the rape by claiming through its corporate representative Suzie Vasquez (a lawyer) that on Carnival cruise ships allegedly “sexual assaults are actually very, very rare . . .” Carnival claimed that the victims consented to sex with the crew member in the closet (a claim that the jury obviously did not believe).

As explained below, rapes on Carnival ships are hardly “rare.” Carnival has the most rapes and sexual assaults on its cruise ships, both in total numbers and on a per capita basis. It has more sexual assaults than around half of the states in the U.S. on a per capita basis. Read: Department of Transportation Finally Discloses Crimes on Cruise Ships for 2023: Carnival Cruise Line Ships Continue to Have the Highest Number of Physical Assaults, Sexual Assaults, and Rapes On the High Seas.

Cruise Expert – Dr. Ross Klein

Prior to trial, Carnival tried to prohibit notable cruise expert Dr. Ross Klein, who is the author of the popular CruiseJunkie web site, to testify regarding the frequency of rapes aboard Carnival cruise ships. Dr. Klein has previously testified as an expert before both houses of Congress regarding the issues of crime on cruise ships. His opinions are attached. Jane Doe’s counsel sought to elicit testimony from Dr. Klein that Carnival had notice that Mr. Anggara, the Carnival assailant, was likely to assault passengers. Carnival tried to block Dr. Klein’s testimony that:

  • The cruise industry as a whole, and Carnival Cruise Line in particular, has an awareness of the problem of rapes, sexual assaults, and sex-related incidents on cruise ships, including the incidents of rape, sexual assaults, and sex-related incidents on Carnival cruise ships.
  • Carnival Cruise Line failed in using available data to conduct a social epidemiological analysis of crimes on its ships with the goal of targeted and specific strategies for preventing rape, sexual assaults, and sex-related incidents.
  • Guests are given an elevated sense of safety by promotional material for Carnival Cruise Lines cruises, and by publication of crime statistics for rape and sexual assault on its website.
  • The sexual assault of Jane Doe was to a degree foreseeable given the cruise line’s knowledge about past sex-related incidents, about use of alcohol onboard Carnival ships, and its failure to implement reasonable initiatives to address the problem of rape, sexual assault, and sex-related incidents onboard Carnival ships.

In an order denying Carnival’s motion in its entirety, the federal magistrate ruled that Dr. Klein is qualified, his methodology is reliable, and his testimony is helpful to the jury.

Rape Cases Against Carnival Cruise Line

In the year before COVID-19 which crippled the cruise industry, there were over 100 sexual assaults on cruise ships, according to DOT cruise crime statistics which breaks down as follows:

  • Carnival Cruise Line: 43 sexual assault victims (37 passengers).
  • Royal Caribbean: 31 sexual victims (20 passengers).

I attended a hearing in 2007 before Congress regarding cruise ship crime where a senior FBI official testified that only 7% of sexual assaults on cruise ships are prosecuted in federal court.

This poor prosecution rate is because of the tendency of he FBI not to believe victims of sexual crimes, the historic reluctance of the FBI to become involved in sex crimes at sea, the tendency of the cruse industry to sweep the crimes under the rug, and the inadvertent or intentional destruction of evidence on cruise ships.

Carnival Cruise Line Leads Cruise Industry with the Most Sexual Assaults

The U.S. Congress has studied the problems of rape aboard cruise ships. The cruise industry’s trade organization, CLIA, argued that per capita cruise ship crime rates should be based on the total number of people cruising in any year (around 30,000,000 cruised this year) rather than the average number of people populating cruise ships on any given day. By analogy, the per capita crime statistics for U.S. cities are calculated based on the number of residents in a city. Tourists who visit the city during the year are obviously not counted as residents. Imagine how the crime statistics for New York City would be diluted if instead of calculating crime rates based on the number of residents in the city (approximately 8 million), this number was inflated to include each of the more than 60 million people who visit the city annually.

Congress rejected CLIA’s argument and concluded that per capita cruise crime statistics should be calculated based on the average number of passengers sailing at a particular time, not on the annual number of passengers.

Congress’ methodology to determine sexual assault rate results in a per capita rate for Carnival Cruise Line of nearly 40 (39.6) per 100,000.  This number is calculated by taking the number of sexual assaults on Carnival ships reported to the FBI in the last 12 months of 2019 (43), and dividing it by the total number of people on Carnival’s fleet of ships (around 75,000 passengers and approximately 33,500 crew members for a total of 108,500).

The per capita rate of sexual assaults on Carnival ships of 40 per 100,000 is significant.  It is a higher per capita rate than California, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Georgia (and over a dozen other states). The rate on Carnival ships is higher than the average per capita rape rate in the United States of around 27 of 100,000.   

In statistics kept by the Department of Transportation showing allegations of criminal activity on ships that embark and disembark passengers in the United States, sexual assault is the top offense. There were 82 allegations in 2018 and 101 in 2019.

Carnival’s Discovery Violations

The Court also entered discovery sanctions and assessed attorney fees against Carnival for its delay of over one and a-half-years in producing videos from a security officer’s body-worn camera (BWC) which contained several interviews with the victim. “The Court finds that sanctions are in order to compensate Doe and her counsel for fighting tooth and nail to obtain video that they were entitled to at a much earlier stage of the process.”

Jane Doe’s Counsel – Daniel Courtney

Jane Doe is represented by Miami lawyer Daniel Courtney.  This is a significant verdict which demonstrates the seriousness of the case and the victim’s injuries.

The Jury Obviously Did Not Believe Carnival

This case reveals the danger of the cruise line claiming that a young woman on a vacation cruise would allegedly “consent” to go into a closet to have sex with an employee (stranger) who ejaculates on her. The jury obviously was offended by this claim, particularly from the Carnival representative (a lawyer) who falsely claimed that shipboard rapes are “rare” when in fact the Carnival fleet has more sexual assaults than half of the states in the U.S.

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Image credit: Carnival Miracle – Master0Garfield – CC BY-SA 4.0  commons / wikimedia (top); CRUISEMAPPER (bottom); Fredy Anggara – Daily Mail.

A 28 year-old man was arrested this past weekend in Port Everglades on charges of raping a 20 year-old woman on the Freedom of the Seas, according to local News 10. At the time of the arrest, the Royal Caribbean cruise ship had just returned to port in Fort Lauderdale from a seven day cruise to the Bahamas, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands.

Juan Campos was booked into jail in Fort Lauderdale following the arrest. Campos’s criminal defense lawyer told the press that “it sounds like they were making out, it started going a little too far, when the lady said ‘stop,’ when she verbally expressed ‘stop,’ he stopped.” The attorney claimed that “it was a normal cruise, he was with friends, they met some people on board and next thing you know, he’s charged with this crime.” The defense lawyer bizarrely claimed that the police report contained no reference to “force or violence” otherwise “they would have charged it with force or using violence.” Of course, as we all know, the crime of rape does not require force or violence but only a lack of consent. The arrest report indicated that the victim was allegedly penetrated with an unknown object against her will, stating “in the feeling of pain, the victim placed her hands on the defendant’s shoulders, pushed him and told him to stop and it hurts.”

The crime data reported by Royal Caribbean to the FBI pursuant to the Cruise Vessel Safety and Security Act indicates that there were at least ten rapes and sexual assaults alleged on its ships during the first two quarters of this year.

Sexual assaults, including rape, are the most reported crimes on cruise ships.

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Image credit: Juan Campos, arrest report, and screen grab – Local 10 News; Freedom of the Seas – Beyond My Ken – CC BY-SA 4.0 commons wikimedia.

September 4, 2024 Update:

The Miami Herald contains additional information (“At one point, Campos was on top of her and unbuttoned her shorts, the report states. He then penetrated her with something against her will, deputies say. The woman tried pushing Campos off of her, even telling that ‘it hurts’ and to ‘stop,’ according to the report. Campos, however, continued and attempted to turn her over to sexually assault her but was unable to do so, deputies added.”) as well as a denial by Campos’ defense lawyer (“Campos’ attorney, Ed Hoeg, said in an email to the Herald that his client is not guilty, and there are witnesses who will dispute the alleged victim’s version of events.”)

A Royal Caribbean stateroom attendant on the Symphony of the Seas was sentenced by a federal court judge to 30 years in prison for producing child pornography.

Arvin Joseph Mirasol, age 34, a citizen of the Philippines, was sentenced in Miami federal court yesterday.

During a cruise from Fort Lauderdale in late February, an adult guest who was traveling with members of her family discovered a small spy camera (less than the size of a quarter) hidden in their bathroom. The tiny camera was positioned immediately below the sink and was positioned to record people using the toilet. The guest immediately reported the spy camera to guest services and security officers eventually responded. While security was present in the guests’ cabin, Mirasol appeared in the cabin and admitted that he owned the camera. The guests were savvy enough to record the location of the camera as well as Mirasol’s comments when he returned to the cabin.

Upon the Royal Caribbean cruise ship’s return to Port Everglades on March 3rd, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents searched Mirasol’s electronics, “uncovering numerous videos of children in various stages of undress,” according to Local News 7.

Federal agents discovered “numerous videos of naked females” as well as images of child sexual abuse while looking at his phone, an SD card and USB stick. One video showed Mirasol installing a camera in a cruise guest’s bathroom.

Mirasol began working as a cabin attendant for Royal Caribbean in December of 2023. The investigation revealed that Mirasol had been ‘secretly recording passengers, including children as young as 2 years old” since he began working on the Royal Caribbean ship three months earlier.

According to federal investigators, Mirasol would enter guests’ rooms “while they were showering and hide under their beds to record them exiting the shower.”

In addition to the federal criminal charges of producing child pornography, Mirasol was also charged with six counts of video voyeurism in state court after the Broward Sheriff’s Office interviewed him.

Child pornography and the use of spy cameras on cruise ships have become a particular problem in the last year. This incident is just one of at least sixteen incidents in a period of six months where crew members working on cruise ships have been arrested on child pornography charges.

So far, crew members from five companies have been arrested on child pornography charges: Carnival – 6 (or 7)(see explanation below*); Royal Caribbean – 4; Disney – 3; Celebrity – 1; and Holland America Line – 1.

We are aware of at least two incidents cases where spy cameras were placed on cruise ships to film unsuspecting guests. One case involved the Carnival Fantasy:

Spy Camera and Transmitter in Carnival Fantasy Cabin U160 – Video Voyeurism?

And one recent incident involved Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas just last May:

FBI: Cruise Guest Arrested For Using Hidden Camera in Public Bathroom on Harmony of the Seas To Videotape More Than 150 Individuals Including At Least 40 Minors

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Image credits: Symphony of the Seas – Darthvadrouw – CC BY-SA 4.0 commons / wikimedia; Arvin Joseph Mirasol – Broward County Sheriff’s Office via News 7; headline text – News 7.

*The employer of one crew member, Ferry Maryanto, who was arrested in June for child pornography, was not identified. He may have been employed by Carnival Cruise Line on either the Carnival Horizon or the Carnival Magic. He was arrested at the port of Miami on a day when two cruise ships operated by Carnival, one ship operated by Virgin Voyages and one ship operated by Norwegian Cruise Line were in port.

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