Royal Caribbean crew members have allegedly watched almost a dozen men buy alcohol for a 15-year-old girl and said nothing. The school-aged girl was later gang-raped by these men.
This case has brought awareness to the excessive amount of assaults on popular cruise ships that have now become known as “cities without police.”
A lawsuit filed in Florida reveals the teen experienced this assault in 2015. Although it occurred four years ago, this case is now coming to public light.
According to reports, the girl was allegedly given alcohol by almost a dozen men while being in the public lounge which resulted in her becoming “highly intoxicated, obviously drunk, disoriented and unstable and obviously incapacitated.” The men then took the young girl into a cabin room where they assaulted and gang-raped her.
A court document states that: “She alleges that everything (other than the assault and gang-rape) happened in view of multiple Royal Caribbean crew members, including those responsible for monitoring the ship’s security cameras.”
The document went on to say: “But Royal Caribbean’s crew members allegedly did nothing to stop the group of adult male passengers from buying alcohol [for the girl], from getting her drunk, or from leading her away to a cabin while she was incapacitated. They allegedly did nothing to protect or help her.”
The lawsuit was first filed in December 2016 against Royal Caribbean but was dismissed for failing to state a claim. Royal Caribbean argued that “it was unforeseeable to the staff that a guest could be raped under the circumstances described”, according to The Sun.
The teen girl appealed which led to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal helping to reverse the decision and bringing the case to light.
The website Cruise Law News has released findings of hundreds of sexual assaults being reported on cruise ships in the last few years.
