Cruise Passengers Allege They Weren’t Protected From Sexual Assault
Now aged 21, the alleged victim spoke of his experience for the first time. (Buzzfeed News refers to her as “G.” to protect her identity.) Then at only 11 years old, G. was cruising with her grandmother and her little sister and was enthusiastic about the holidays. “Automatically, as a child, you think it’s going to be incredible,” she said.
Before the ship even was pushed back for the Caribbean, G. went down to obtain the Wi-Fi password, she told Buzzfeed News. “I asked the person who was outside the restaurant to the hall,” she recalls. “And when he guided me, he immediately seized my breasts.”
G. ran in the hall in search of someone who could tell her the Wi-Fi password. She said that she “was afraid to go through the same direction” on the way back because she could cross the trails with the man who had touched her. But she needed to go back to her room and feared getting lost on the giant ship.
While G. was passing the restaurant, she went up to an elevator. She said that the same employee followed her, blocking the doors. “He said,” Can I have a kiss? ” She recalls. “I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he said,” No, not there “.” She then alleged that the employee leaned, kissed her on her mouth.
After letting him go, G. ran to his room in tears. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
She said that she explained to her grandmother why she was so distraught, and they went to the hall to report what had happened to the guest services. G. said they had asked him questions about the incident and what the employee looked like and promised that he would be inquiry.
Taplin, who was on board at the time, said that she had watched the surveillance images of the elevator, which confirmed the child’s events. Later, G. said that he was asked to identify the attacker by examining the photographs of four employees. According to Taplin and G., the girl identified the aggressor as a server in one of the ship’s restaurants.
Taplin said she had done her best to investigate the case, but said she had been clogged throughout the process. She said she said to one of the senior officers of the ship to call the FBI while the boat was still moored in Port Canaveral, Florida. But the officer decided to reject around 5 p.m. and did not inform the FBI until the ship is in international waters.
Subsequently, said Taplin, the senior officer interviewed the member of the accused crew while he was present. The official meeting of the meeting, obtained by BuzzFeed News, says that the crew member “hesitated, but finally denied kissing the girl” and only gave him a “high five and a hug”.
Taplin said that what was not included in the report was that at the meeting, the officer had threatened the crew member, saying: “I’m going to cut your cock right now” and that he would delete the testicles of the crew member and “put his balls in his mouth”.
When the ship accosted the Bahamas the next day, local police arrived. According to Taplin, the police reprimanded and threatened the alleged striker, put him pressure to admit. “It was so false,” said Taplin. “I mean, you had it in the act with what he had done, right?”
In the end, he signed a statement that Taplin alleged was written by the Bahamian police. “I touched her right breast with my left hand”, reads the signed confession. However, Taplin noted that the alleged suspect had not been arrested. Instead, he was repatriated to the state of Goa, India.
G. said that she was so afraid for the other holidays that she did not want to leave the side of her grandmother and never felt safe on board. She said that she could only relax during a stop at Castaway Cay, a private Caribbean island that Disney has because she knew that her assailant would not be there.
After G. pointed out the attack, she said that Disney asked the employee who was cleaning her room to demonstrate how they created small animals out of the towels and they put a princess bed on her bed. “But that was essentially that,” she said. After she got back from her cruise, G. said that her family has only heard Disney to tell them that the member of the accused crew had been expelled.
