Yesterday I spent the afternoon in Washington DC. attending the hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation titled “Recent Incidents Show Need for Stronger Focus on Consumer Protection.”
I have attended seven Congressional hearings on cruise ship safety issues from December 2005 through March 2012. This is my eight hearing.
Yesterday evening I received a tweet from a Twitter friend in Antigua: "several cruise passengers witnessed a day light killing in the tourism area of #antigua today." Later I was told that an "attempted robbery at one of the shops led to a gunman shooting the woman in the head. She died on the spot around
The news reports out of Mexico are shocking.
Six women from Spain vacationing in Acapulco were bound and raped by a gang of five men who burst into their holiday rental. Their male friends were gagged and bound by telephone cords and robbed.
One news source said the mayor of Acapulco did not help matters
On New Year’s eve, a major newspaper in the Bahamas published an article about crime affecting cruise ship passengers and crew.
The Tribune said that on December 13th, the United States Embassy in Nassau warned of increased violent, criminal activity in the Bahamas. The embassy warned that armed robbery remains a “major threat” facing U.S. visitors
A couple of days ago I wrote a blog about the police in the Cayman Islands making an arrest of a local man who allegedly sexually assaulted a cruise passenger who was visiting the island.
The newspaper article that my blog was based on was very vague and mentioned only that the alleged rape occurred
A newspaper in the Cayman Islands is reporting that the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is investigating a reported sexual attack on a female cruise ship passenger.
The incident happened on Friday July 27, 2012 according to the local police in the Cayman Islands. The newspaper account is very vague. The newspaper states only that
Twenty-seven years ago, a state appellate court in Florida held that a cruise line owes its passengers a duty to warn of known dangers beyond the point of debarkation in places where passengers are invited or reasonably expected to visit. Carlisle v. Ulysses Line Ltd., S.A.,475 So. 2d 248, 251 (Fla. 3rd DCA 1985).
The Carlisle
A forensic medical expert in Australia, appalled by the high number of rapes and disappearances of passengers on cruise ships, has written a novel to bring awareness to the problem of crime while cruising.
Dr. Kathryn Fox appeared on an Australian morning television program to discuss her book "Cold Grave" about the death, murder and
The Costa Concordia in January disaster set off a seemingly endless avalanche of stories on cable news this year about ship fires, sinkings and other cruise disasters, as well as a steady stream of articles and videos about sexual assaults during cruises, drunken brawling passengers, and the disappearance of women at sea.
I’m just one of
The big news coming from the cruise industry is that the CEO of the Cruise Line International Association, Christine Duffy, launched a new blog. One of the primary purposes of Ms. Duffy’s blog is to attack what CLIA is calling “sensationalist” and “misleading” news accounts of crimes on cruise ships.
Ms. Duffy recently sent
Today the cruise Industry trade organization, Cruise Line International Association ("CLIA"), sent out a press release announcing that its CEO, Christine Duffy, now has a Twitter account: @CLIACEO
I could not help but think, oh boy is this going to be fun.
Ms. Duffy began her tenure at the helm of CLIA in January
Every once in a while a story comes along which blows the lid off of the status quo.
Such a story broke yesterday when Salon Magazine published a blockbuster article "Erasing Cruise Ship Crime." Written by Matthew Harwood, the Salon article tackles the ugly spectacle of our nation’s FBI sabotaging the efforts of
Salon Magazine published a blockbuster article today about how the FBI gutted a cruise safety law designed to protect the cruising public.
The article states that the grassroots International Cruise Victims (ICV) association worked for years with Congress to pass, on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, the Cruise Vessel Security & Safety Act. The new cruise
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A 20 year old Brazilian man pled guilty this week to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery in the rape of a 15 year old girl on the last night day of a Royal Caribbean cruise.
Broward Circuit Judge Matthew Destry sentenced Luiz Scavone to one year in jail and declared him a sexual
NBC Bay Area reports that Congress is pointing the finger at the the FBI and the U.S. Coast Guard for watering down a cruise crime law on behalf of the cruise lines to make it easier for the cruise industry to withhold statistics about crime at sea from the American public.
The Cruise Vessel Safety
The Seattle Times published an article today raising the issue of whether cruising is really safer, and crime reporting more transparent, following the passage of the Cruise Vessel Safety & Security Act which came into effect this year. The article is Concerns Linger About Cruise Line Safety.
The article was written by Christopher Elliott.
NBC Bay Area aired a cruise crime special last night regarding the problem of sexual assaults at sea. The program is called "Crime Onboard – The Dark Side of Cruising."
NBC reports that although cruising is one of the most popular ways to travel and vacation, passengers are often left in the dark
"Naked Law" by AVVO recently published an interesting article "What Happens to Cruise Ship Criminals?"
The article poses the following scenario:
"A group of young women take a seven-day cruise to the Caribbean, a trip they’ve been planning for months. The second night on board, they have a couple of drinks in one
