For victims of sexual assault on cruise ships, justice can be elusive
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
By CEYLAN YEĞINSU
Two days into a 12-night Caribbean cruise on the Norwegian Sun, after an evening watching karaoke with her parents, a 20-year-old woman went to the nightclub to meet people her age.
After ordering a drink around 11 p.m., the woman, referred to as Jane Doe in a lawsuit filed against the cruise line in December 2024, said she remembered nothing until the early morning, when she stumbled down the corridors, frantically tapping her key card on door after door until she found the stateroom she shared with her parents.
They heard her come in around 2 a.m. but didn’t fully awaken until someone banged on their door at 5 a.m. Through the peephole, Doe’s father saw two men shouting his daughter’s name. Her mother called security; it was then she saw her daughter on the bed shaking.
When the security officer asked Doe if she knew the men, she started crying and made references to having had sexual activity with them.
It wasn’t until hours later, when she tested positive for an ingredient commonly used in date rape drugs that Doe said she knew she had been sexually assaulted: “I realized what they did to me when I got the drug test results.”
Doe’s experience was one of 120 alleged sexual assaults on cruise ships that were reported to the FBI in 2024, up from 101 in 2019, a year before the pandemic shut down the industry. From January to September this year, 102 cases were reported, compared with 95 for the same period last year. Those figures are likely higher as many cases go unreported, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, a U.S.-based anti-sexual-assault organization.
As cruising hits record demand, with 34.6 million passengers last year, crime on ships sailing from the United States has also risen. Among the crimes that ships must report — including thefts of items worth more than $10,000 and physical assault — sexual assault is the most prevalent.
Cruises often have a party atmosphere, with large quantities of alcohol consumed, which can contribute to assaults, notes RAINN.
In 2010, Congress passed the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, requiring lines sailing in and out of U.S. ports to report certain crimes to the FBI, which investigates and publishes accusations. But the database provides only the number of incidents, not how they are handled. The act also established training standards for crime prevention, detection, evidence preservation and medical assistance, and required ships to have video surveillance.
“The cruise industry is one of the most controlled, regulated and monitored in the world,” said Anne Madison, a spokesperson for Cruise Lines International Association, the industry group, adding that “serious crime on board cruise ships is extremely rare.”
Yet despite the 2010 law, not much has changed in the prevention and prosecution of onboard sexual assaults in the last 15 years.
Even knowing how many allegations led to charges or trials is almost impossible. No agency is charged with tracking that information nationally, and a New York Times request in May to the Department of Justice to compile the data has not been fulfilled.
Through an extensive search of legal and news databases, the Times found just 13 prosecutions and seven convictions from 2015 to 2025.
Reporting onboard crimes is challenging: Ships fly foreign flags to benefit from lower taxes and looser regulations, and sail across international jurisdictions. Law enforcement is carried out by private security teams whose loyalties often lie with the cruise company that employs them, according to maritime lawyers and former security staff.
Even when victims seek justice through civil lawsuits, the hurdles are formidable.
“It’s not easy for victims to go up against these huge cruise lines,” said Laurie Dishman, 54, a board member of the International Cruise Victims Association, a nonprofit focused on survivors of onboard crimes, and herself the victim of an onboard sexual assault. “It’s a long, hard, traumatic battle.”
Daniel Courtney, a Miami-based personal injury lawyer who represented a woman who recently won a $12 million lawsuit against Carnival Cruise Line after accusing a crew member of rape (Carnival has appealed), said that when passengers complain, the responding security officer often prioritizes the line’s interest. “Security will do whatever it needs to protect the company first,” he said.
Although the 2010 cruise act established training standards, only one crew member on each vessel must be trained in crime prevention and evidence gathering. A 2011 online curriculum developed by the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI and the U.S. Maritime Administration is not mandatory and was found “ineffective in providing qualified first responders with the capability to address shipboard crime, especially sexual crime,” according to a review by maritime-training academies for the cruise victims association. They recommended mandatory training by certified individuals who report directly to the FBI, the Coast Guard and other entities.
According to the Jane Doe complaint, Norwegian Sun’s security head “harassed, badgered and pressured Doe,” and told her the complaint would go nowhere unless she could describe the pain of her assault.
When a crime is reported to the FBI, the investigation is often hampered by the ship’s foreign registration and the logistics of getting an agent onto the ship. It can take hours or days to secure a crime scene.
Complicating the situation is the interview process. Getting timely information from a victim is “a balance and a challenge,” said Special Agent Summer Baugh, who specializes in cruise crimes for the FBI Baltimore field office.
In Jane Doe’s case, it wasn’t until the day after the alleged attack that the Norwegian Sun arrived in Puerto Rico, where Doe was interviewed by two male agents.
After the agents left, the ship’s security told the family that the agency would not investigate further because CCTV footage showed Doe going into the men’s cabin willingly.
When the family asked the security head if the FBI had reviewed blood-test results showing the presence of amphetamines, which are known to be used in date rape and party drugs, and a breathalyzer reading equivalent to about two drinks, he said he couldn’t share investigation information.
While studying Jane Doe’s case, the Times reviewed dozens of lawsuits against cruise lines in which passengers say they were drugged, raped or sexually harassed. Many were minors who had been entrusted to child-care services or were unsupervised.
Court documents and interviews with lawyers, industry experts and former employees reveal a theme of inadequate evidence-gathering: unprocessed rape kits, witnesses who weren’t interviewed, evidence contamination and loss of video footage.
Many victims, like Jane Doe, file civil suits when their efforts to pursue justice through the criminal system are thwarted. But the prospect of lengthy court cases involving billion-dollar companies leads many to settle. Those settlements usually include nondisclosure agreements, which keeps onboard assaults out of the public eye.
Jane Doe was among those who took that route.
Dishman, who said she was raped by a security officer on a Royal Caribbean ship in 2006, is among the few to go public.
After the FBI declined to prosecute her case, she contacted the media and filed a lawsuit under her own name. “I knew the only way to bring about any change was to go public,” she said. She settled with Royal Caribbean in 2008, but she did not sign an agreement to stay quiet.
She said that cruise lines are becoming more aggressive about settling, sometimes offering payouts before a suit has been filed, to avoid bad publicity.
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