A U.S. Border Protection agent arrested a cruise passenger who sailed on the Scarlet Lady for possession of child pornography on Wednesday at Virgin Voyages’ terminal at the Port of Miami.
Michael Fanning, age 47, of Atlanta was arrested when authorities reportedly discovered multiple videos depicting child pornography on his phone, according to multiple news sources.
Federal agents searched Fanning’s phone and found three videos showing child pornography, according to local NBC-6 in Miami. A further search reportedly revealed two additional porn videos
“Fanning spoke with investigators and said he had numerous videos saved on his phone in a folder named ‘Y’ and said the ‘folder was used to categorize the pornography as young,’ the report said.”
WIOD-610 Radio in Miami reported that “the content of the discovered videos included scenes involving the rape of boys as young as 8 years old.”
We report routinely when cruise passengers or crew members are caught with pornography, and when guests are sexually assaulted during cruises.
One-third of the sexual assaults which occur on cruise ships involve minors. This firm continue to report on such cases which are consistent with the testimony of a senior FBI official before Congress and investigations by major national news outlets. See: Sex Assault Victims on Cruise Ships Are Often Under 18.
In March, we reported on the disturbing criminal cases of an assistant cruise director and guest activities officer employed by Princess Cruises who were involved in creating and distributing graphically violent child pronography iamges while on a Princess cruise ship.
To date, Princess Cruises have avoided any mention of these crimes involving a minor who sailed with her parents on a Princess cruise ship.
In June, we reported that a cruise ship employee, who describes himself as a music director of Royal Caribbean, was jailed in Australia for obtaining and accessing child abuse photographs and videos.
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Image credit: Scarlett Lady – Virgin Voyages; Michael Fanning – Miami-Dade Police Department via NBC-6.