Originally posted May 27, 2008
It is so easy to get away with almost any crime on a cruise ship or vacatio. Here's an example. If you are a psycho male cruise ship employee, it would be easy to befriend women as their "friendly cruise staff" (this isn't the "Love Boat" people...) They may offer to buy a woman a drink, either drug her, or get her very intoxicated and assault her, perhaps steal her belongings, and leave her somewhere in the ship. When she comes to, she has no clue of where she is or what happened. She might never remember who that man was because there are hundreds of employees throughout the ship.
Would she remember what he looked like?
Would she feel too embarrassed to come forward?
Would they just laugh and tell her she was drunk and it was her own fault?
The majority of the time those woman (and victims of other crimes) finish their vacation, go home and try to forget about it. If that is even possible.
If a victim does come forward to report a crime, a "report" is taken; but the law DOES NOT REQUIRE that it must be reported to authorities. ANYWHERE. Cruise ships are companies that follow no moral codes or societal rules. Who knows how many "reports" have been tossed in the garbage already crumpled with round coffee stains smearing all the facts...the blood, sweat and tears of that victim.
Here's a great example from an article regarding
maritime laws and victim recourse by Julia Layton:
"...But onboard crime? Where would someone run to after they've stolen your wallet, or worse, committed rape or murder? It's a logical line of thinking, but it doesn't always apply. A 2007 congressional hearing on cruise ship safety revealed some surprising statistics. According to data provided by the world's biggest cruise lines, in the past three years, 28 people have disappeared on the open seas, and three have been found. Almost 200 people have reported cases of sexual misconduct or assault; and four people have been victims of grand theft [source: Tampa Bays 10].
That might not seem like much when you consider the tens of millions of people who take cruises each year. But it seems like a huge number when you consider the difficulty of enforcing the law on the open seas. Very few of those cases have been thoroughly investigated, let alone solved.
The problem is that maritime law -- the law that applies on the water -- is famously convoluted. Cruise ships aren't even required to report crime statistics to any governing body, and the question of who's supposed to investigate when a crime does occur is a sticky one.
Because maritime law is so difficult to clarify (in part because every country has its own version of it), most cases of cruise ship crime are decided on a case-by-case basis. Law on a cruise ship (or any other ship) starts with the flag the ship is flying under. A ship flies the flag of the country where it's registered, and, in general, the laws onboard a ship are the laws of that country. However, when figuring out which laws apply on a sea vessel, territory also must be taken into consideration.
...Lawsuits against a cruise line are different, though. While it might seem like a U.S. citizen robbed in U.S. territorial waters off the coast of Los Angeles could sue the cruise line in Los Angeles, it actually depends on the cruise ship ticket's fine print. If the ticket says the cruise line can only be sued in Seattle, then a Los Angeles court will almost always refuse to hear the case.
Another article that cites this very issue may invoke some change:
"WASHINGTON (AP) — Only five of the 28 people who disappeared from cruise ships in the past three years have ever been found. That's according to data disclosed to Congress by the world's largest cruise lines. A congressional memo compiled in advance of a House hearing on cruise ship safety also details 177 sexual misconduct incidents and four robberies of amounts over five-thousand dollars.
...Cruise lines are not required by law to publish comprehensive crime statistics and criminal law varies greatly on international waters. Congressman Christopher Shays says he's not comfortable with the accuracy of statistics given voluntarily. The Connecticut Republican, who chairs a House national security panel, is working on legislation to make such reporting mandatory.
In addition, a May, 2006 FBI article entitled, "Crime on the High Seas--Cruises Not a Vacation from Vigiliance cited:
"There were 39 cases of crimes on the high seas last year involving U.S. citizens, including sexual and physical assaults, death, drug smuggling, theft...from Fiscal Year 2000 to mid-2005, the FBI opened 305 criminal cases, more than half of them assaults."
Doesn't sound like the FBI is very successful at getting these right. Only 5 out of 28 people who were missing in the last three years were found? Their batting average is pretty pathetic.
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