Congress questions cruise ship safety and security

Mar 6, 2006 3:10 PM

           

Six years ago, on the last night of a Mexican cruise returning to Los Angeles, an Arizona businesswoman stopped at a poolside bar before dinner. The bartender handed her a fruity concoction and the business woman says she felt her legs go rubbery and her mind turn to mush as the bartender led her to an employees-only restroom and raped her before she passed out cold. The FBI -- the lead agency for investigating incidents involving U.S. citizens on the high seas -- took several weeks to interview the bartender, who claimed what happened in that bathroom stall had been consensual, Time Magazine reports.
Unlike many other cruise-crime victims, the businesswoman, Janet Kelly, 49, settled a lawsuit with the cruise line that included an agreement allowing her to talk about her experience, although she can't name the cruise line or the size of the settlement.
The Time article reports that this week Kelly will testify before a congressional committee as it debates whether there needs to be greater federal oversight of the booming cruise industry, which served 11.2 million passengers last year, up 63 percent since 2000. Although the vast majority of passengers are American, cruise ships steer around most U.S. laws by registering in foreign countries, Time reports. Because of murky jurisdiction issues, the companies report crimes to the FBI on a voluntary basis.
In the wake of several recent missing-persons cases aboard cruise ships -- at least 28 in the past three years -- lawmakers are trying to determine whether those incidents and other crimes at sea get reported accurately, let alone investigated and prosecuted. The politician leading the charge, Congressman Chris Shays, represents the Connecticut district that had been home to hunky honeymooner George Smith, whose mysterious disappearance from a Royal Caribbean cruise in July was initially dismissed by the ship's captain as an accident or suicide, despite signs suggesting foul play.
The few statistics available aren't too comforting, the article says. No one tracks the total number of incidents cruise ships report to U.S. law-enforcement agencies. The FBI opened just 305 cruise-crime investigations from 2000 to September 2005, suggesting that either those floating hotel-casinos are some of the safest places on earth or this caseload is just the tip of the iceberg. Evidence supporting the latter: the FBI generally won't look into an onboard theft unless the items stolen are worth more than $10,000.
Generally, the only authorities most cruise-crime victims can turn to are the ship's security personnel, who have a strong incentive to protect the industry's fun-in-the-sun image. "The cruise line controls the scene of the crime, controls the witnesses, controls the evidence," Miami attorney James Walker, who represented Kelly, told the magazine. "It's all being filtered through the company's risk-management department."
Cruise lines, says maritime lawyer Charles Lipcon, "are silently working against the victim. They're busy trying to make sure criminal cases don't see the light of day."
Michael Crye, president of the International Council of Cruise Lines, insists that the low incidence of reported crimes reflects the generally safe environment on the ships. Despite cases like Kelly's, he notes, cruise employees are vetted more rigorously than hospitality workers onshore and undergo a background check by the U.S. State Department. Royal Caribbean reported that its violent-crime rate last year was 15 incidents per 100,000 people on board. "We're approximately 30 times safer than American communities in general," says the company's head of fleet operations, Captain Bill Wright, who maintains that Royal Caribbean discloses every incident, even petty thefts, to authorities.
In response to the congressional probe, Crye says he and several cruise-line officials met with the FBI, the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection last month to "shore up any perceived deficiencies in reporting." At the same time, FBI assistant director Chris Swecker says he is considering development of a program to train cruise-industry security chiefs to improve evidence collection by using such tools as rape kits and blood tests for date-rape drugs.

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