House Hears Testimony on Prevalence of Crimes Aboard Cruise Ships
WASHINGTON _ A Sacramento woman who was sexually assaulted on a cruise ship last year fought back tears Tuesday as she told a House panel about her ordeal.
“The terror of that experience still overwhelms me,” said Laurie Dishman, a 36-year-old Sacramento, Calif., native who told a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee panel that she was raped on a Royal Caribbean cruise to Mexico in February 2006 by a ship janitor serving as a security guard.
“Only three security guards were on duty, for 3,000 people,” Dishman added later. “We’re talking about a Royal Caribbean city that was lawless.”
Tuesday’s hearing was requested by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., a new member of the transportation committee who has joined in Dishman’s battle to bring greater scrutiny to crimes aboard cruise ships.
“The more I’ve inquired, the more I’ve learned that there is no shortage of cases,” Matsui said. “Cruises operate in a legal vacuum. . . . It’s an unacceptable situation.”
An estimated 10 million to 12 million Americans go on cruises each year, and for most of them it is a fun, trouble-free time. But there are sexual assaults, thefts and vacationers lost overboard, perhaps because of intoxication, thoughtless accidents or even physical attacks or suicide.
Cruise companies don’t like to see these incidents publicized, witnesses said Tuesday. If the incident happens when the ship is in international waters, U.S. laws most likely won’t apply. There typically are no trained law enforcement officers on the party ships, and crimes, when they occur, often aren’t properly investigated.
The prevalence of alcohol makes the cruises high-risk zones for sexual assaults, said Ross A. Klein, a Memorial University of Newfoundland professor who has researched the problem extensively.
Klein estimated that the risk of women being sexually assaulted is 50 percent greater on a cruise ship than living in a typical American city.
“Sexual crimes are a problem for the cruise industry,” he said.
Dishman said she decided to go public with her story because of poor treatment by cruise workers, Royal Caribbean’s insensitive reaction and what she saw as a hurried decision by federal prosecutors to not charge her assailant.
She said she was attacked by a janitor who earlier had been seen drinking. She remembers waking up the following morning with her neck sore and marked from the pressure that had been applied during the attack, during which she apparently passed out.
Some of the details were gruesome. Her anguish was apparent as her voice quivered and she struggled to complete sentences. As bad as the attack was, she said her treatment by the ship’s officers was worse.
She said she was told at one point by the crew that “you need to control your drinking.” But the officers never questioned her alleged assailant, she said, and did nothing to protect the crime scene and seemed more interested in getting her off the ship and back home than determining if a crime had been committed.
When the incident was reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on her arrival in Los Angles, the investigation appeared cursory to her and she felt “revictimized.” The U.S. attorney’s office determined there was insufficient evidence on the same day that FBI agents scoured the cruise ship for evidence.
“This cruise industry cannot be trusted,” she said, pleading with committee members to “please, read my complete statement.”
Gary Bald, senior vice president of global security for Royal Caribbean, acknowledged that the company made mistakes in the way it investigated Dishman’s case and was slow in getting information to her.
But Bald said prompt follow-up on reports of shipboard crimes is a “moral” issue for the company, and it is committed to keeping its passengers safe.
Last week, the cruise industry in an attempt to mute the call for tough new legislation, agreed to begin voluntarily reporting in more detail the incidence of shipboard crimes.
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