CruiseMates recently ran an article by its editor Paul Motter entitled "Most Ridiculous Cruise Ship Lawsuits." One of the lawsuits was filed by a 50 year old lady passenger aboard a P&O cruise ship who attended a talent show dressed in a leopard skin dress who sang a Tina Turner song River Deep Mountain High.
One of the P&O judges, entertainer Rory Healey, allegedly told her he could see her underwear through her dress, commented on her breasts and suggested she could "cougar" him any time.
Her husband said that Mr. Healey then touched the screen showing her image, fondling and kissing the screen image of her breasts. Read more here.
CruiseMates editor Motter mocked the woman and labeled her lawsuit as "ridiculous."
One CruiseMates reader commented: "Wonder what Jim Walker would say about this?" Mr. Motter responded: "Something tells me Jim Walker has already commented on it – probably in the woman’s favor."
Well, I haven’t commented on this sorry state of affairs yet, but here are my thoughts:
This happened on a P&O cruise ship. When it comes to sexual harassment and crimes against women, P&O Cruises has a nasty history.
When I started this blog several years ago, one of the first articles I wrote was about a P&O cruise passenger, Dianne Brimble. A gang of eight slipped her a date rape drug. Ms. Brimble ended up raped and dead, naked on the floor of a cabin occupied by the men who joked afterwards that she had the breath of a dog and they thought about throwing her overboard.
P&O responded to the horrific incident in a manner that i would describe as somewhere between callous and outrageous. Eventually P&O promised to mend its way and clean up its over-the-top fraternity party attitude where women and booze are just part of the cruise fun.
But did it really clean up its act?
P&O quickly pimped out their female passengers, with a sexist "Seamen Wanted" promotional postcard, depicting a deck full of women wearing bikinis, accompanied by a tag line "More girls, more sun, more fun. There’s nothing else a guy needs to know."
No wonder that P&O Cruises experienced sexual assaults in the years following this disastrous ad campaign.
So when I read about Mr. Motter giggling about women’s underwear and the foolish P&O crew member’s not-so-funny comments about "cougar" women, I can’t help to think what a sad state of affairs remains on the P&O cruise ships for this nonsense to be going on. A P&O crew member groping and kissing an image of a cruise passenger’s breasts?
Mr. Healey needs to be sacked ASAP. He needs to be made an example of sexism run wild.
And that goes for CruiseMates’ editor, Mr.Motter. He needs to be canned too.
Dianne Brimble’s family deserves nothing less.
Update:
After posting this article, I received a number of emails blasting me for wriiting about this cruise employee. It seems there is a facebook page called "Save Rory" trying to keep him employed. I could not find the facebook page but ran across this photo of Rory on facebook.
Seems like he posted a photo of himself, a cardboard cut-out of Jennister Anniston in the urinals. Funny? I don’t think so, but let’s see what P&O thinks. The cruise line defense lawyers may want to instruct Rory to take his facebook page down during the pendency of the lawsuit . . .