Following the horrific crime perpetrated by the Holland America Line crew member against the passenger on the Nieuw Amsterdam cruise ship on Valentine’s Day, the cruise industry is pulling out all of the stops to convince the public that the cruise lines carefully screens their employees.

But it’s not true. 

Cruise lines don’t vet their crew members.

The foreign flagged, foreign incorporated cruise industry delegates the obligation to third-party foreign hiring agents to try and screen the applicants. Countries like Indonesia, India, and the countries in the Cruise Ship CrimeCaribbean & Central America have no computerized electronic data-base base of criminals, perverts, sex offenders or pedophiles which can be carefully cross referenced with social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and passport numbers. There is no infrastructure in a place like Nicaragua or Goa to search to make certain that the prospective employees isn’t a sociopath.  There are no U.S. human resource specialists involved. It’s a random, unsophisticated, "hit-or-miss" task conducted (or not) by hiring agents far-far-away who make money when they place people from around the world on U.S. based cruise ships.  

In places like India and the Caribbean, the hiring agents often accept (require) money from the applicant in order to get a job on a cruise ship. The system is often based on bribery.

In places like Jamaica, the applicant has to obtain a certificate from a constable certifying that the applicant has no criminal record. But there is no computerized data-base for the local police in Ocho Rios, for example, to check whether a Jamaican has committed a crime in Negril or Kingston or other places in Jamaica. After a favor from an uncle or a little pay-o-la to a policeman who’s making only $250 a month, anyone can appear with a stamped "I’m-not-a-crook" certificate and hop aboard a cruise ship.

We have seen the official cruise line hiring agents in India tell the applicants that unless they list the Four Seasons, or the Hyatt, or the Hilton as a prior job, they would not be hired as a waiter on a Celebrity cruise ship. Falsification of a resume is not only a common practice, it’s often required by the cruise lines’ hiring agents.

There’s no chance of screening out pedophiles or child molesters. Think your cabin attendant is carefully screened and vetted? No country in Central America or the Far East has a state-of-the-art database tied to someone’s criminal history.  If a pedophile shows up with a certificate from God-knows-who that he is not a criminal, he’s welcome aboard.

The worst ones involved in this rotten system are not foreign countries but the cruise lines themselves. If a crew member aboard Disney has been fired on suspicion of molesting a child, Disney won’t tell Carnival or Royal Caribbean. The security personnel of the cruise lines meet every 60 days. They may discuss the risk of a jihadist terrorist attack, but they don’t tell each other about pedophiles in their own cruise ship’s kid’s centers or rapist-employees who molest teenage girls during cruises. They just fire them and hope they go away.

We have seen cases where a crew member who was fired after he drugged and raped our client ended up later on a Princess cruise ship, and another crew member who was fired after raping another one of our clients later join a NCL cruise ship.

Cruise lines tout that crew members are "vetted by the U.S. Government prior to issuance of a visa." Hogwash. All a crew member needs is a C1/D visa. That’s called a "seaman’s visa." There is no investigation or rigorous screening at all.  A "seaman’s visa" is also called a "transit visa."  It permits a foreign crew member simply to transit through the airport and be taken to the ship.  It’s easy to obtain and essentially just involves an administrative task to obtain one. There is no interview; it’s just paper work.  It’s completely different from a B1/B2 tourist visa which requires an interview and a strict review of a candidate’s background. Most tourist via applicants are rejected; seaman transit visas are rarely turned down.

A couple of years ago I wrote about a former Eastern European who allegedly raped a child in California. He was on the "Most Wanted" list in a city in California. But he was hired to work on a Carnival cruise Nieuw Amsterdam Cruise Shipship which routinely sailed into and out of California. He previously worked on other cruise ships after he allegedly raped the child. Crew member Kaloyanov was a fugitive from justice for 8 years but was safe working in the cruise industry. 

U.S. Customs and Immigration officials in California, who are suppose to check the crew and passenger rosters every time a ship enters a U.S. port, failed to realize that Kaloyanov was a criminal suspect – even though he was on a "Most Wanted" database of a city in California!

The resourceful California police finally caught up with the crew member when they Googled his name and found photographs of him on line standing in front of a cruise ship. The police then determined that Kaloyanov had worked for Carnival Cruise Lines for four years, as a fitness instructor and the manager of a hair salon on a Carnival ship.

Its a shame that the cruise lines’ "rigorous" pre-employment screening does not even include Googling the applicant’s name.  You can read about this case: 

Most Wanted Rape Suspect Arrested On Carnival Cruise Ship – Worked As Manager Of On Board Hair Salon      

My view:  99% of crew members are honest, hard-working individuals trying to support their families back home. But there are perverts, predators and nut cakes everywhere. The problem is that cruise lines try and save money by sloughing their obligations off to mostly disinterested or sometimes corrupt far-away agents that they don’t vet themselves. There is no way this doomed system will successfully weed out the criminals who will prey on unsuspecting cruise passengers and their children.

 

I suggest reading: USA TODAY’s "Who’s working on the cruise ships you’re sailing aboard?"

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Photo Credits:

Top: Broward Country Sheriff’s Office

Bottom: Wikipedia / Cybergoth