A search for sex-crime victims on cruise ships as Florida travelers line up to sue – The Mercury News

Vinod Sreeharsha | (TNS) Miami Herald

Two young sisters and their mom boarded Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas in Fort Lauderdale on a February afternoon for an eight-day family vacation, eager for an escape to Aruba’s pristine beaches and Curacao’s crystal clear water.

At sea the next day, the younger sister, while using her cabin bathroom, noticed something strange when she reached under the sink for toilet paper. The girl spotted a small camera pointed toward the shower. The family quickly called guest services, which alerted ship security.

Ship security officers investigated and detained a Royal Caribbean room attendant. He was kept under guarded confinement until police met the ship when it returned to Port Everglades a week later on March 3.

Searching his electronic equipment including a USB stick device, law enforcement agents found “several videos of naked females undressing in their bathrooms.” One girl seemed to be 10 years old, they said.

On Tuesday, Oct. 15, a class action civil lawsuit was filed in Miami federal court against Royal Caribbean Cruises and Arvin Mirasol, the former Royal Caribbean crew member. The plaintiff, called Jane Doe in the complaint and represented by the Miami firm Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, was a passenger aboard Symphony of the Seas on or about Feb. 25, 2024.

The lawsuit comes less than two months after Mirasol was sentenced in Fort Lauderdale federal court to 30 years in prison on a charge of producing child pornography.

On Aug. 28, U.S. Judge Melissa Damian gave the maximum possible sentence to Mirasol, a 34-year-old Philippines national who had pleaded guilty a few months earlier.

The civil lawsuit is one of several likely to be brought against Royal Caribbean in the next month. This comes as law enforcement agents are trying to slow the spread of images across the dark corners of the internet. The lawsuits could reveal the number of victims is far greater than initially identified. The Miami Herald has reached out to Royal Caribbean for comment on the first of the suits.

This year, at least 16 crew members from several cruise giants have returned to South Florida ports on their ships only to get hauled away in handcuffs, according to Jim Walker, co-founder of the firm Walker & O’Neil Maritime Lawyers. Almost all were charged with possession or transport of child pornography, a federal crime.

“That is an unusually high number,” compared to past years, he said. He has tracked South Florida cruise ship cases for decades and says “the number of arrests on child porn have become more frequent in the past two years.”

Emerging cruise ship victims

Arvin Mirasol still faces charges in Florida state court of up to 15 counts of “video voyeurism.” His next hearing in Broward Circuit Court was scheduled for Oct. 15.

At least 23 people have been notified by police that they were recorded on a Royal Caribbean cruise, and they’ve hired lawyers. In addition to Lipcon, at least two Miami law firms say they expect to file civil lawsuits against the cruise company in the coming month.

“I think there are scores of people out there who were affected but don’t know,” said John H. Hickey, founding partner of Hickey Law Firm. The maritime attorney’s firm represents two families, each with children, he said.

In his plea agreement, Mirasol admitted he had been placing cameras in guest room bathrooms “since he started working on Symphony of the Seas around December 2023.”

That means he could have worked on 12 different cruises before the one where he was caught. Six of those would have been six-night cruises and six were eight-night trips, according to Royal Caribbean’s published itinerary. All departed and returned to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale.

The class action suit filed Tuesday by Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman alleges there could be “up to 960 passengers” who are victims, said Jason Margulies, an attorney and partner with the firm, which represents more than 10, including the girl who found the camera.

The complaint defines the class as passengers aboard Symphony of the Seas between Dec. 1, 2023, and Feb. 26, 2024, who stayed in cabins serviced by Mirasol.

The lawsuit alleges invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress by video voyeurism and sexual assault against Mirasol and liability by Royal Caribbean. The lawsuit also accuses Royal Caribbean of inadequately training and supervising workers aboard the vessel and failing to “implement and/or enforce an adequate safety management system.”

Because of the sexual nature of the crimes and the ages of victims, the law firms and the Miami Herald are not identifying the passengers.

Nick Gerson, a lawyer with Miami-based Gerson & Schwartz, said he is representing seven victims, including three kids, ranging from 12 to 17. On behalf of its clients, his firm plans to sue Royal Caribbean for emotional and physical stress.

The effects are “going to be sneaking up on these children for years,” he said. “All the families are in counseling.”

Royal Caribbean said in March that after Mirasol was arrested, the company fired him. At that time, Jonathon Fishman, a spokesman for Royal Caribbean, told the Miami Herald that “we immediately reported this to law enforcement and terminated the crew member, and we will continue to fully cooperate with authorities.”

Watching kids undress

Mirasol regularly cleaned passenger rooms, restocked towels and changed sheets on the vessel, which carries 5,518 passengers and 2,200 crew members. But that wasn’t all he did, according to court filings and the criminal complaint from the Broward County Sheriff’s office.

One video law enforcement reviewed “clearly depicts the defendant installing the camera” in the bathroom after entering a guest’s room. “The camera is aimed towards the shower.”

A girl then enters the restroom. She’s wearing a yellow-orange wristband on her left hand indicating she is a minor. She removes her clothes and enters the shower. “The child appears to be 10 years of age.”

In another video, in the same guest room, the girl is still showering, then finishes and gets dressed. Meanwhile a boy enters the same room. “He is believed to be the female child’s younger brother.” Each video is five minutes long.

Mirasol’s cellphone search history included “hidden cameras” and other terms associated with child sexual abuse material, according to the complaint. He also admitted to going into rooms and hiding under the bed to record people naked.

After being read his rights, Mirasol admitted that he recorded guests undressing and taking showers in the staterooms he was assigned. He said that after retrieving the camera and watching the video, he would “pleasure himself.”

He acknowledged videotaping underage girls was illegal and said he tried to choose females 16 years old and above. Yet, in its forensic analysis of his devices, the federal Homeland Security Investigations found about 11 children in videos, ranging from 2 to 17 years old.

“I want to control it, but I can’t,” he noted.

On June 5, he and federal prosecutors reached a plea agreement. Mirasol pleaded guilty to coercing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of visually depicting it, and transporting and sharing those images.

As it reviewed the videos Mirasol recorded, federal agents also requested passenger manifests from Royal Caribbean from each cruise Mirasol was on. They then contacted travelers, telling them they may have been victims and briefing them on what happened.

Finding all the victims

Loretta Guevara, an attorney at the Hickey Law Firm, said that as recently as the end of June, one of their clients was told by the Department of Homeland Security that the agency was still reviewing footage.

“There were so many photographs and so many videos of different passengers that they were still working on trying to determine who the victims were, to notify them,” she said.

The investigation remains ongoing, according to the government.

In addition to looking for all the victims in the Mirasol case, federal agents are also seeking to thwart the spread of exploitative images. That’s one key reason for the spate of arrests of other crew workers, said Margulies, the maritime lawyer. There were few arrests before the ex-Royal Caribbean room attendant but a bunch after, suggesting the feds are trying to crack down on the circulation of the images, he said.

In June, Iputuagus Karnawan and Imadewisma Dana, both 28 and reportedly working for Carnival, were arrested at PortMiami and charged with possessing child pornography on their phones. Both are Indonesian nationals.

These and other cases this year may seem less severe than the Mirasol case since the defendants are being charged for possession and/or transport of child pornography rather than production of pornography on a ship, a direct violation of a passengers’ privacy. But they are still federal crimes.

“Both are committing harms against children,” said Jennifer Newman, national director of the exploited children division of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “Every time that image is shared and recirculated, that child is being victimized.”

Since the victims were digitally recorded, “the resulting media files are easily duplicated, uploaded to remote servers worldwide, disseminated via peer-to-peer sharing, and are subject to posting on the world wide web and the dark web, where voyeuristic recordings as these are traded, sold, viewed, and downloaded by all types of people,” Margulies said.

The lawsuit that his firm filed Oct. 15 alleges that the “plaintiff lives in a constant fear, reasonably under the circumstances, that images of the plaintiff undressed while engaging in private activities are regularly viewed by others and used for illicit purposes.“

More cases on cruise ships

The problems go beyond any one case.

On April 15, the feds filed a complaint in South Florida federal court against Tirso Neri, charging him with transportation and possession of child pornography. He had worked for Disney Cruises for the past 10 years. HSI agents and U.S. Customs and Border Protection found videos of children about 9 to 16 years old on his electronics in over 100 images.

And around Jan. 17, after Disney Dream returned to Port Everglades, crew member Amiel Joseph Trazo was accused of possessing and transporting child pornography. Homeland Security Investigations said in this case, it received tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The number of cases this year is raising the question of whether the problem of child sexual exploitation is getting worse on cruise ships compared to past years. Remote cameras and other monitoring equipment keep getting smaller and cheaper, making them easier to obtain and carry. Social media makes content a click away.

Neri, the former Disney employee, told HSI agents that he was on several group chats on Telegram and Facebook Messenger and downloaded porn from there.

Neither the government nor cruise industry — carriers or their trade group — maintains official data on the number of child sexual exploitation or child porn cases in the cruise industry. That’s a source of frustration to victims’ groups.

Asked if HSI is seeing a strong link between cruise ships and child sex exploitation cases, Anthony Salisbury, special agent in charge with HSI, told the Miami Herald, “No, we’re not. … We are going after it everywhere.”

Still, victims’ groups, child advocates and maritime lawyers believe cruise companies and the industry need to do more and be more transparent, not only with data but in communicating with the public and each other over how they’re grappling with the issue.

“They can be more proactive as a group,” said Newman, the official with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

She suggested learning from the hotel industry. The American Hotel and Lodging Association set up a foundation, the AHLA Foundation, to help members extinguish child sex trafficking they were seeing and have been public about it.

Cruise carriers’ hiring process and background screening are also facing more scrutiny. The lawsuit filed Oct. 15 alleges that Royal Caribbean failed to “adequately interview, assess, conduct background checks, obtain peer reviews, investigate, confirm recommendations, and conduct other enhanced vetting of employee crewmembers with direct access to passenger cabins.”

Cruise companies will employ onboard about 300,000 people this year from more than 150 countries, according to the Cruise Lines International Association. “Cruise lines focus their recruitment efforts on established bases for crew such as the Philippines, Indonesia, India, China, and Eastern Europe,” the industry group wrote in a report.

For example, 63 percent of Royal Caribbean’s shipboard workforce is from the Philippines, Indonesia or India, the top three suppliers, according to according to a 2023 company regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The international workforce has contributed to the growth and globalization of cruising. At the same time, some legal experts say that several of these countries don’t do adequate screening, or often delegate it to third-party agencies without oversight.

“Many of these countries don’t have an adequate criminal record keeping system,” Hickey said

Disney declined to answer questions from the Miami Herald on the individual cases, background checks, criminal screening and training for its crew members.

Royal Caribbean perspective

At Royal Caribbean, ““we do background checks on all employees,” said Heather Hust Rivera, senior vice president and global chief communications officer.