Are Your Kids Really Safe on a Cruise?
(Photo: iStock)
“He pinned her and he raped her.”
The mother described to Yahoo Travel the horrifying moment when her 17-year-old daughter allegedly was raped by another teenager during a family cruise this past summer (to maintain the privacy of the victim and her family, Yahoo Travel is not naming the girl or the mother). But as angry as she is about the alleged rape and the fact her daughter’s alleged attacker was never charged, this mother is furious about the way the whole incident was handled by the cruise line and the FBI agents who investigated the case.
“The ship did everything to protect their interests, not my daughter’s,” she says. “I will never go on a cruise again. Never.”
Related: Protect Yourself Against Sexual Assault on a Cruise
While the vast majority of the millions of people who take cruises every year do so safely, the sad fact is that rape and sexual assault aboard cruise ships is a concern — and it’s an even greater concern when it involves a minor. According to the FBI, about a third of reported alleged sexual assault victims aboard cruise ships were minors.
That unnerving stat gives rise to the unnerving question: Are your kids safe on a cruise ship?
Crime victims and passenger advocacy groups say no, because of systematic problems on cruise ships and in law enforcement. “You can almost be guaranteed that if a teenager rapes a teenager on a cruise ship, nothing will happen — even if it’s reported,” Ken Carver, chairman of International Cruise Victims Association (ICV), tells Yahoo Travel.
But on the other hand, frequent cruisers and the industry say yes, your family is safe, and the numbers prove it. “I’ve got three kids, two daughters, and we’ve taken dozens of cruises,” Larry Kaye, general counsel for the cruise industry trade group, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), tells Yahoo Travel. “Crime everywhere is a problem. But to suggest it’s a problem on cruise ships that in some way exceeds the general problem of crime in our society or on land is just absurd. It’s a fraction of what it is on land; all the statistics bear that out.”
A parent’s nightmare at sea
A mother says her daughter was held down and raped on a cruise ship this summer (Photo: iStock)
The mother who talked to Yahoo Travel says she and her family didn’t have any qualms about cruise safety when they boarded a cruise to the Bahamas last July (her ordeal was first reported in travel blog Elliott.org). She says one evening at dinner, her teen daughter told the family she planned to meet some new friends she’d made on an upper deck later that night. “When she arrived on Deck 12, her friends were not there yet,” says the mother.
But a group of other kids were on Deck 12, and the mother says her daughter started talking to one of the boys in the group. The two teens learned they had a lot in common. “He doesn’t live too far from us,” the mother recalls. “[He] knew a lot of kids from my daughter’s high school because he was in sports and my daughter’s a cheerleader.” She says the boy then suggested the girl and his friends go check out a party on another deck, but he had to make a quick stop in his room first.
“She did not realize until they got to the room that all the other kids had disappeared,” says the mother. “She said his response was, ‘They probably went to the party. Let’s just go in for a minute.’” The mother says her daughter went into the room, where the boy forcibly raped her.
When the shaken girl later told her parents what had happened, the mother says they reported it to ship’s security and took her daughter to the medical center for a rape kit. “She’d never even been to a gynecologist,” says her mother.
The mother says her daughter was given a rape kit after the alleged assault. (Photo: iStock)
She says security then escorted the family back to the daughter’s room and collected the girl’s dress, bra, and underwear. “As soon as they got that, that was the end,” says the mother. “We were never spoken to again [by anyone on the ship].”
When the ship returned to its home port, two male agents from the FBI (which generally has jurisdiction over cases involving crimes aboard ships originating in the United States) were waiting. The mother says the agents took her daughter so they could speak with her about the incident — alone.
“My daughter was in there for an hour and a half,” says the mother. “She comes out crying. She told me the two agents said, 'Do you really want to mess up this boy’s life?’ My daughter looked at them and said, 'Yes. He did this to me.’”
Related: Raped Abroad: What Happens If You’re Sexually Assaulted on Vacation?
Nevertheless, the mother says the family later was informed the boy was not going to face any charges. “They don’t have enough,” was the explanation she says she got from prosecutors. “It’s 'he said/she said.’ It’s two minors. It’s no jurisdiction. It’s international waters. We were given all these excuses.”
Adding insult to injury, the mother believes the cruise ship never turned over the evidence its security personnel had collected from the daughter’s room.
“My daughter’s rights were violated,” the mother says. “My daughter’s having a rough time. And me…” She pauses. “I think about it a lot.”
A common story?
Not enough cruise ship rapists end up in cuffs, say victims’ rights advocates. (Photo: iStock)
“I think part of the problem is families go on a cruise ship and they turn their kids loose,” ICV’s Ken Carver, whose 40-year-old daughter, Merrian, disappeared on a cruise ship back in 2004 in a case that remains unsolved. “It’d be like turning your kids loose in New York City for a week and there’s no police. You wouldn’t do that. But people get on ships and they’re served unlimited alcohol and they just can’t assume that everything is fine.”
When things aren’t fine and a sexual assault occurs, it’s a particular problem. “Many children don’t even report it to their parents,” says Carver.
Still, Carver places much of the blame for this issue on the cruise lines and the FBI. He contends cruise lines and their security personnel — who often are the first people alerted to an on-board rape — don’t pursue sexual assault cases involving minors vigorously enough, perhaps because they’re afraid of bad headlines. “The security of the cruise ship has a vested interest in having it not move forward,” says Carver.
WATCH: Cruise ship sexual assault investigation
A look back at a horrific assault on a cruise ship passenger in 2014. The assailant, a member of the crew, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. (Video: CNN)
Carver says he works with a number of parents (including the mother who talked to Yahoo Travel) who tell the same story: their child was sexually assaulted at sea and the case wasn’t pursued. “I can’t tell you how upset they are when they find out their daughter has been raped and the FBI does nothing,” he says. “It’s not enough evidence or you don’t want to ruin the life of the person that committed the crime, or they’ll say it’s 'he said/she said’ — they come up with reasons but they just do not prosecute those crimes.”
Carver says another problem is that the public isn’t told exactly how many minors are raped on cruise ships. Currently, alleged sexual assaults and other crimes aboard cruise ships are reported to the U.S. Coast Guard and posted on its website; major cruise lines — including Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian — also disclose crime stats on their own sites. But neither the Coast Guard nor the cruise lines disclose how many of those alleged sexual assaults were against minors. So Carver is backing a proposed new law called The Cruise Passenger Protection Act, which would follow 2010’s Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act. Among other things, the new bill would add crimes against minors to the list of crime statistics cruise lines and law enforcement have to publicly disclose.
The cruise industry: Cruising is safe
Fortunately, this is still the experience of the vast majority of cruisers: safe vacations. (Photo: iStock)
The cruise industry is fighting back over claims cruising is unsafe for anyone, especially young people.
“It’s been established that [cases of sexual assault aboard cruise ships] are extremely rare,” says CLIA general counsel Larry Kaye. An estimated 22 million people will have taken cruises by the end of 2015 — 13 million of them originating from North America. Through the third quarter of this year, the Coast Guard reported a total of 12 cases of sexual assault on U.S.-based cruise lines — 10 where a passenger was the alleged victim and two where it was a crew member (keep in mind, the Coast Guard only tracks cases closed by the FBI. The number of sexual assaults reported overall is likely higher).
Kaye also disputes claims cruise ships are reluctant to report sexual assault cases. And he takes a dim view of victims rights groups calling for more regulation.
“They are never going to be satisfied,” says Kaye, “despite the fact the cruise lines have all this special regulation already in place, despite the fact that the cruise lines voluntarily post crime statistics on their websites — which no other industry in the United States or elsewhere in the world does.”
Kaye says CLIA is vigorously opposing efforts to require cruise lines to issue separate public reports on sexual crimes against minors. “To suggest that minors in particular as a separate category should be tracked is just meritless,” he says, “because crime in general on cruise ships and specifically in each of the categories is much lower than it is on land. To track it separately suggests that it’s more of a problem on cruise ships. Separating out minors suggests that it’s a category that requires some type of special attention. It brings attention to a non-issue.”
How to cruise with teens
How to protect your teens at sea. (Photo: iStock)
“A cruise is a good vacation for teens,” says Dr. Candyce Stapen (@familyitrips), a family travel expert who’s been on numerous cruises with her two now-grown children. “That’s one of the nice things about cruising that you can give your kids some freedom. But with freedom comes some responsibilities.”
Stapen does admit that cruising with teenagers is a special chore. “You have to assume, especially with older teens and pre-teens, that anything that could happen on land at a teen party can happen on a cruise ship,” she says. “Whatever you as a parent worry about, whether it’s drugs or sex or too much drinking, that could happen on a cruise ship."
Before taking cruises, she says she liked to role play with her kids to help them practice dealing with uncomfortable situations such as being pressured to drink or being invited to a party in someone’s cabin. "You really have to have a serious talk with your kids about this stuff that could happen,” she says.
Once on the cruise, Stapen recommends giving your kids some freedom, but not letting them completely off the leash. “I always made my kids check in with me,” she recalls. “You say, 'At 11, I’m going to be sitting around the pool, probably on the starboard side. Look for me and check in with me.’ And then you might say, 'In the afternoon, I’ll be in the cabin at five, reading a novel. Check in with me.’” She recommends getting teens walkie-talkies, or even using cell phones (if they work at sea), so you can constantly keep in touch with them.
And once you establish cruise rules with your children, Stapen says it’s crucial that you enforce them. She recalls one incident when her then-15-year-old son violated an agreed-upon curfew during a cruise; she confined him to the cabin the next day. “You really have to lay down the law,” she says. “Your words have to mean something. They have to know that you mean it, just like on land.”
Still, Stapen says it’s impossible to fully keep kids, especially teens, out of trouble on cruises — citing her son’s curfew violations or the time her teen daughter befriended a male member of the band performing on the ship. (“I said, 'Oh, no no no no — not the band guy,’” Stapen recalls about her response. “I was angry and that probably wasn’t good. I probably should have been more level-headed.”)
“You wish you could have total control but you don’t,” she says. However, she adds: “With a sensible teen and some really specific rules and the parent checking in, they can have a lot of freedom and also have a good time and be safe.”
No guarantees
But sometimes, just like in the real world, bad things happen despite how much parents work to protect their kids. The mother whose daughter was raped on a cruise ship tells Yahoo Travel she’s considering legal action against the alleged rapist (who, says the mother, is claiming the sex with her daughter was consensual).
“I need to decide if I want to put my daughter through this now,” says the mother. “But the thing is, I am so determined. This kid got a free ride and all because of the laws of international waters.”
At this point, she’s ready to join the battle victims’ rights groups are waging against cruise lines they feel aren’t addressing the problem. Says the mother, “I’m determined to work with the International Cruise Victims Association to get laws passed so this never happens to another family again.”
Meanwhile, the cruise industry is balking at what it feels is an impossible standard. “The cruise ships, just like any other private industry, can’t completely eliminate crime,” says Kaye.
But behind this battle over teen safety on cruise ships lies one uncomfortable reality. “Unfortunately we live in a crazy world,” says Stapen. “And no place is 100 percent safe.”
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