A Carnival crew member, Reza Heta Pratama, was sentenced in New Orleans by a federal district court judge for possession of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). Pratama, a citizen of Indonesia, was arrested in July 2024 when the Carnival Valor docked in New Orleans following a cruise to Mexico last summer.
Carnival instructed Pratama to exit the cruise ship after terminating him due to sexual harassment complaints filed by coworkers. While at the Erato Street Cruise Terminal, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers discovered videos that appeared to be child sexual abuse materials on Pratama’s laptop and cell phone.
Pratama waived his Miranda rights and admitted that he received and stored child pornography on his devices and showed the arresting officer his Telegram groups where he shared the pornography. A subsequent forensic examination confirmed that Pratama used Telegram instant messaging service to receive child pornography from his acquittances.
The sentencing judge noted that he possessed 116 videos and 54 images on his electronic devices depicting the sexual exploitation of minors, as revealed in a public filing by the prosecution. In addition to this sentence of four-years, Pratama also received a decade of supervision for his crimes, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Louisiana. He faced up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and supervised release which could have extend to a lifetime.
The arrest and sentencing of Pratama is to be contrasted with the current wave of Filipino crew members who find themselves harassed and deported with no evidence of crimes. The majority of the deported Filipinos were denied the right to speak with a lawyers and then accused of possession of child pornography usually without a shred of evidence.
Child pornography is a despicable crime that should be prosecuted and punished to the full extend of the law. Targeting over 100 Filipinos on what appears to be trumped up child pornography charges does nothing to stop the real predators like Pratama. Pratama was caught red-handed with 160 images including videos of child pornography which he admitted possessing on the Carnival cruise ship. Pratama is the type of person that should be targeted by CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, not hard working Filipinos.
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Photo credit: Reza Hera Pratama – Cruise.Blog; Carnival Valor – Mason Piscitelli – own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons/wikimedia.