Two adult cruise passengers were arrested last Friday at PortMiami on charges of sexually victimizing a 14 year-old boy on the Royal Caribbean Independence of the Seas, according to numerous local news stations.
According to arrest reports from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office , cruise passengers Ricardo Daniel Mondragon Leal (left photo), age 37, and Jose Juan Prudencio Diaz (right photo), age 36, molested the boy in the public sauna of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, according to Miami Local News 10.
Ricardo Daniel Mondragon Leal and Jose Juan Prudencio Diaz
The arrest reports state that the crimes happened last Thursday while the two men, both Mexican nationals who lived and traveled together, were in the sauna of the Independence of the Seas.
The news sources state that Diaz exposed himself to the boy and masturbated in front of the child, while forcing the boy to touch him.
Leal also reportedly masturbated in front of the boy and forced him to perform oral sex. Leal also performed oral sex on the victim.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office arrested both men after the cruise ship returned to PortMiami on Friday.
Both men face charges of lewd and lascivious exhibition on a child and lewd and lascivious molestation of a child.
Diaz faces a charge of sex with a victim without informing the victim of his HIV status. He is being held without bond at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami.
Leal is facing a count of child sexual battery and is being held in the Metrowest Detention Center in Miami.
According to the Daily Mail, both men were denied bond Saturday, as a prosecutor said: ‘The defendant, in this case, acting in concert with another defendant, they were both on a cruise. This shows that they tried to target a specific minor, and this could be done again.”
Passengers sexually molesting minors on cruise ships, particularly Royal Caribbean cruise ships, is nothing new as we have pointed out over many years. Just one year ago, the Miami-Dade Police Department arrested a twenty-one (21) year old man from Georgia for sexually propositioning a fourteen (14) year-old boy in the sauna of the Explorer of the Seas. The adult passenger started to masturbate while “making eye contact with the victim.” The arrest report states that the adult then asked the boy if he’d ever had oral sex before. Police said after the boy replied “no,” the assailant then “solicited oral sex” from the teen, which he declined.
As we reported in 2013, “sexual assaults on Royal Caribbean cruise ships, as well as on other cruise lines, are more frequent than the cruise industry will admit. There are many hundreds of crimes which have occurred over the years on the Royal Caribbean fleet – child porn freaks, child predators, and sexual deviants – both crew members and fellow passengers.”
You can read about some of these disturbing cases in a prior article we posted: Sexual Perverts & Pedophiles on Royal Caribbean Cruise Ships.
For example, a 73 year-old passenger was arrested in 2009 after he was caught fondling a 6-year-old boy while in a hot tub on the Royal Caribbean Liberty of the Seas cruise ship. When that boy got away, the adult made brief contact with another boy. The man told the arresting police investigators that he took the cruise on the Royal Caribbean ship so he could molest young boys.
The most recent incident last week follows the news from the Symphony of the Seas lasy year where a thirty-four (34) year old crew member employed by Royal Caribbean secretly placed a spy-camera in the bathroom of a mother and her two adult daughters who were sharing a cabin. The Broward County Sheriff’s office and the FBI arrested the crew member on multiple charges of video voyeurism and child pornography after his camera and electronic devices indicated that he also videotaped children as young as five to ten years of age in various forms of undress. It was later revealed in the investigation by the Broward County Sherriff’s Office that the pervert crew member had installed cameras in nearly 100 cabins on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Read: Cruise Ship Worker Accused of Hiding Cameras in Bathrooms to Spy on Guests.
These type of crimes also occur on many other cruise lines, including in saunas and steam rooms on cruise ships. A 58 year-old passenger was arrested and charged with a felony count of “abusive sexual contact” of two 12-year-old boys in a cruise ship sauna on the Diamond Princess, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
In another case involving a Carnival cruise ship, here’s how local Miami news station WFTV described a sauna assault case, based on the Broward County Sheriff’s Office report, when a Carnival Cruise Line employee sexually assaulted a young boy:
“Yovany Sauzo-Batiz (photo below), age 46, of Honduras, was working on the Carnival Valor as a stateroom steward when he tried to start a conversation with a teenage passenger in a sauna. The victim then moved to a shower area to avoid the suspect when the alleged sexual conduct occurred. Immediately following the incident, the victim identified the crew member to his father, who detained him with the assistance of other passengers until ship security arrived.”
Carnival employee Yovany Sauzo-Batiz
Sauzo-Batiz was charged with sexual battery of a person under 16 years of age and lewd and lascivious molestation.
There are many other criminal sauna / steam room cases which you can easily find online.
To our knowledge, cruise lines do not provide security, supervision or monitoring of the public saunas on their ships. Even though many cruise ships have rules that state that guests must be at least 18 years old to utilize spa facilities, including the sauna and steam rooms, Carnival’s policy is here), most cruise lines do not enforce the policy. No cruise line to our knowledge warns parents that there is a danger of sexual abuse by adult passengers and crew members when minors use saunas and steam rooms during cruises.
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Image credit: Independence of the Seas– Kiran891 CC BY-SA 4.0 commons / wikimedia; sauna on Independence of the Seas – Beyond Ships; Ricardo Daniel Mondragon Leal and Jose Juan Prudencio Diaz Sauzo-Batiz – Miami-Dade County Police Department via Local News 10; Yovany Sauzo-Batiz – Brevard Sheriff’s Office via WFTV.