Cruise ship dangers, who is liable?

Cruise ship dangers, who is liable?

Carnival Cruise Lines Celbration (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cruise ship dangers are a very real and sobering fact.

Taking that luxurious Cruise for what you hope will be some well deserved R & R can be especially dangerous to single women with sexual assaults occurring in record numbers.

Sex abuse aboard cruise ships happens quite frequently, much more than is even reported due to the way the Cruise Ship companies try to keep it a secret by having victims signs confidentiality agreements.

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Well documented estimates are that 95% of the crimes go unpunished due to Maritime Laws.

Children fall victim too to sex abuse and the very sad thing is that many of these assaults are committed by Cruise Ship employees or they are somehow involved in the crimes that occur..

The sex abuse aboard cruise ships has careened out of control and we’ve recommended that if you’re a single gal thinking about taking a cruise, then you might want to rethink your vacations options or, at the very least, pay attention to the 6 important cruise safety tips for women aimed at preventative measures you can undertake.

These tips can be utilized by anyone but are particularly useful to women traveling or staying alone aboard a cruise ship.

Cruise ship dancing shoes (click to purchase, photo:POETIC LICENCE)

But it doesn’t end there. Women are being victimized off the ship when the ship is in port on excursions.

A woman that was a passenger aboard Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas that sailed into Cozumel, went ashore into the port to shop. She was provided maps by the cruise ship staff and ended up being gang raped. The cruise ship says they have no liability whatsoever to warn passengers of possible issues in all the ports they travel to and in that particular case, a judge agreed.

Even though the cruise ship operators know about the many crimes that occur on these excursions, they don’t want to tell you about it yet will happily provide information about the region just not crime in the region even though Royal Caribbean knew of at least 7 other rapes in that area.

14 year old Lizmarie Perez Chapparro was a passenger with her family aboard the carnival cruise ship, Victory, in 2010 when she was shot killed while riding in a bus filled with tourists that was caught in the crossfire between what is believed to be warring gangs. This occurred in the St Thomas, US Virgin Island in the Coki point area when her family took her on a non ship sponsored excursion.

Carnival does provide excursions to the same area.

Her parents had filed a lawsuit and it was deemed there was not enough evidence.  They were told they could refile if and when they did have enough evidence.

They opted to appeal instead and a federal appeals court on Wednesday restored a negligence lawsuit against Carnival Cruise Lines.

Carnival Cruise Lines sponsored their own excursions to the same area but would like to wash their hands of any liability in the case.

Should the cruise companies be held liable?

They rarely are and if you fall victim to a crime aboard “international waters”, for the most part you are “on your own”

Until and unless the cruise ships see a substantial decrease in patrons or are simply ordered to do do so because of new laws that many would like to see enacted, they will simply not be motivated to change their ways.

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• Is Cruise Ship Liable for Perils on Shore?

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