The Stateroom

While rare, crimes like sexual assaults do occur on cruise ships and passengers may not always be aware of how their rights change at sea.

Can you spot the problems? Sexual Assault Sexual assaults, while rare, are the No. 1 crime on cruise ships. Theft Only a theft of more than $10,000 is required to be reported to the FBI or Coast Guard, so reports of many petty thefts never reach the public. Ticket Cruise tickets often contain restrictive clauses that limit passenger rights in the aftermath of an accident or crime.

When a crime occurs on land in the U.S., police and prosecutors pursue criminal investigations in relatively uniform ways, following established protocols to collect information, protect victims and preserve evidence. But the minutes, hours and days after a crime occurs on a ship can unfold very differently.

For example, instead of calling 911, crime victims on cruise ships typically alert onboard private security officers employed by the cruise line. Critics say this could lead to a conflict of interest, since these security officers are responsible both for the initial response to a crime (including deciding whether and when to report the crime and preserving the crime scene) and for protecting the reputation of the cruise line.

“On the one hand the cruise ships see it in their business interest to keep the passengers safe, therefore it is effective to have a good security regimen on board,” said Anamika Twyman-Ghoshal, an assistant professor of criminology at Stonehill College who specializes in maritime crime. “However… if the security officers are employed by the cruise line there will be concern that they can manipulate the numbers recorded or simply change how incidents are defined.”

The cruise industry insists that its first and foremost priority is to protect passengers and that cruise lines do everything they can to respond immediately to the needs of victims, secure the crime scene and preserve evidence so that law enforcement can carry out an investigation.

“Suggesting that there's a conflict of interest portrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the cruise line,” said Bud Darr, senior vice president of technical and regulatory affairs at CLIA, the cruise line industry association. “I think that it’s absurd to think that the cruise line would view themselves as a criminal investigation body, and insulting to suggest that we have any less interest in criminals being prosecuted than any other responsible members of our society.”

Alerting security officers rather than calling 911 is not the only difference between cruise-based and on-shore investigations, according to the FBI. Law enforcement may not get to a ship right away. Jurisdiction issues can prevent or hold up an investigation if the ship does not enter U.S. territory. International witnesses and suspects can pose added complications.

“The fact the crime occurs on the ocean also allows easy disposal of evidence,” said FBI spokesman Christopher Allen, “including the potential disappearance of the victim’s body in the case of a homicide.”

The cruise line industry association points out that this statement is speculative and could apply to lots of situations on land, too, emphasizing that serious crime on cruise ships is extraordinarily rare compared to rates on land.

Cruise lines that make port in the U.S. are required to report crimes including homicides, assaults that result in serious injuries, sexual assaults and thefts of more the $10,000 to the FBI and the U.S. Coast Guard. Because of maritime laws, the FBI typically takes the lead in investigating them. On land, similar crimes would likely fall to state or local law enforcement. But no such reporting requirement exists for less serious crimes, like petty theft, so unless a passenger reports the crime to on-shore law enforcement, it’s as if the crime never happened.

In the weeks or months following a serious assault, passengers have very different legal options than they would have had on land. This is in part because passengers, sometimes without knowing it, effectively sign away many of their legal remedies when they book a cruise. The fine print of many cruise tickets includes clauses that place limits on the types of grievances passengers can sue for, the window of time they have to bring a lawsuit, and even the location of a trial.

“If Carnival was driving a delivery truck and rear-ended you, you’d have a whole different set of rights than you have as soon as you cross the gangway,” said attorney Aronfeld.

Many of the passengers aboard the Costa Concordia, a massive cruise ship that struck rocks and capsized off the coast of Italy in 2012, killing 32 people, found out about these restrictive tickets after disaster struck. If they were unhappy with the €11,000 Costa offered to each surviving passenger ($71,000 for loss of life), they had limited options because those amounts were specified in the fine print of their tickets. And if they did decide to sue, they couldn’t file in U.S. courts because their tickets specified all lawsuits must be brought in Italy.

There are, however, legal limits on how far these clauses can go to absolve cruise lines of responsibility. Cruise lines cannot, for example, give passengers three months to sue for an injury (they must allow at least one year). Nor can they make passengers sign waivers that immunize the cruise lines from all responsibility for injuries or death caused by negligence or other factors that are the cruise lines’ fault.

Which is exactly what happened in 2011 on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas. A passenger sued the cruise line after suffering an injury on the "FlowRider," a simulated surfing/body boarding activity. The cruise line denied responsibility because the passenger had signed a special waiver before taking the ride giving up her right to sue. But an appellate court ruled the waiver was unenforceable and prohibited by federal maritime law.

When a crime occurs, there is no guarantee that the public will find out about it. Some alleged crimes are never reported at all, and others may see delays of months or years before they are made public, according to a 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office. For example, while cruise lines reported 959 crimes to the FBI between 2011 and 2013, only 31 crimes were made public. The vast discrepancy is in part due to a 2010 law that only required the cruise industry to publicly release statistics for crimes no longer under investigation by the FBI.

While some cruise lines have begun voluntarily disclosing alleged crimes (including those still under investigation), they are not required to do so. New legislation that would require this type of reporting has yet to be finalized.

While notoriously underreported, sexual assaults still top the list of crimes aboard cruise ships. In 2014 alone, three of the major cruise companies – Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian – reported 61 alleged rapes and other sexual assaults (these numbers reflect only allegations, not closed cases). This past April, a 25-year-old crew member pled guilty to sexually assaulting a woman while she was sleeping in her stateroom aboard the Royal Caribbean’s newest ship, Quantum of the Seas

“This crew member’s actions were completely unacceptable and a blatant violation of our policies and procedures,” said Cynthia Martinez, a spokesperson from Royal Caribbean, who also noted that the crew member is no longer employed by the cruise line.

On another Royal Caribbean ship in 2006, Sacramento native Laurie Dishman was raped in her room by a janitor posing as a security guard. According to her testimony in a Senate hearing on cruise ship crimes, when Dishman reached out to cruise personnel for help, they suggested that she be the one to collect any relevant evidence in garbage bags and bring it to them. She also testified that the cruise line personnel contaminated the scene, mishandled and destroyed evidence, delayed notifying the FBI, and delayed providing medical treatment. The FBI eventually declined to prosecute the case, citing insufficient evidence.

When asked for comment on the Dishman case, Royal Caribbean spokesperson Martinez said “I don't feel it would be appropriate for us to respond to your questions regarding Laurie Dishman. They may be best suited for the FBI or Ms. Dishman herself.”

Though allegations of sexual assault typically involve adult female passengers, over a third of those who reported sexual assaults on cruise ships in 2012 were minors. Crew members also report such attacks every year.

Just last month Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., two lawmakers who have pushed for stricter regulations of cruise ships, urged the Coast Guard to certify Victim’s Advocates for cruise lines to make sure victims know their rights and that cruise lines are in compliance with the laws.

The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network has also urged lawmakers to set stricter reporting requirements for sexual assaults on cruise ships and to make more resources available to victims. The organization has published a guide for how to protect yourself on a cruise ship and what to do if you are sexually assaulted on board.