Cruise ship crime reaches 2-year high, casting ‘dark cloud' for travelers: expert
According to data from the Department of Transportation, allegations of 48 crimes were reported onboard cruise ships from Jan. 1, 2025, to March 30, 2025. Twenty-three incidents were reported rapes, 10 were sexual assaults and seven were assaults, which all reportedly happened on cruise ships.
Robert McDonald, a former Secret Service special agent and criminal justice lecturer at the University of New Haven, told Fox News Digital crime negatively affects the cruise industry. McDonald has coordinated security for various dignitaries around the world.
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"Sometimes, the cruise lines don't want to report this information on the front end, depending upon, again, what type of crime it is, which brings unfortunate attention to them, just as it would when we have airplane situations or the delays in airplanes that we're having now," McDonald said.
"All of that negative vibe and negative information puts a dark cloud over the industry, an industry that wants people to come to it and wants them to be comfortable spending their money."
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McDonald said cruises are more prone to crime because of the number of people packed in a tight area.
"I think anytime we get large numbers of people together, whether it's at a Super Bowl game or at a World Series game or an NBA Finals or graduations or whatnot, whenever we get people together, whenever there's alcohol involved, whenever there are people being able to let loose a little bit from their normal personality, I think that exacerbates the ability for numbers to rise in that regard," he said.
"Anytime we get together, those numbers are going to go up, whether that's at a resort, whether it's on a cruise ship."
On March 21, two illegal immigrants were arrested after allegedly molesting a minor while onboard a Royal Caribbean cruise that set sail from Miami.
Jose Prudencio Diaz, 36, and Ricardo Daniel Mondragon Leal, 37, were charged with child molestation and exhibition after an incident on Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas ship.
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The victim was identified as a 14-year-old boy who told police he was in the ship's sauna when Diaz and Leal allegedly began masturbating in front of him.
According to records from the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, Diaz and Leal forced the victim to touch them. Leal also allegedly forced the minor to perform a sex act.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X: "We WILL get these sickos out of our country."
One recent incident involved dozens of Carnival Cruise Line passengers who got into a brawl while disembarking from a ship April 26. In a video posted to social media, several cruise passengers push through crowds in the Port of Galveston cruise terminal.
During the fight, which happened in the cruise port, people can be seen punching and kicking others.
Carnival Cruise Line placed 24 passengers on a "do not sail list," prohibiting them from getting aboard any of the company's ships. A spokesperson for Carnival Cruise Line previously told Fox News Digital it doesn't tolerate violence.
"The matter was turned over to law enforcement," the spokesperson said. "We will not tolerate such behavior, and 24 people have been placed on our Do Not Sail list."
Fox News Digital reached out to Carnival and Royal Caribbean for comment.
Fox News Digital's Greg Wehner contributed to this report.Original article source: Cruise ship crime reaches 2-year high, casting 'dark cloud' for travelers: expert
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"On the Netflix series, you'll hear the agent from the FBI say, 'unfortunately, we weren't able to corroborate their timeframe,' essentially in kind of a dismissive way," Brad said. "But we found and have, through even very recent conversations in the past week, my mom has spoken with the mother of one of the two girls who let them into their room just after 6 a.m. … and the FBI never questioned her on the boat, and they never have questioned her to this day. They never interviewed her," he continued. "And again, after speaking with the mother the other day, she remains adamant that she let them in just after 6 a.m., and they were out at the time they said they were," Brad said. Also, Brad continued, there was a third witness, who was not mentioned in the documentary, around the 6:00 a.m. timeframe to see Amy. The third witness, named Elizabeth, later testified before a grand jury that she saw Amy and Yellow in the lounge and watched Yellow make Amy a brown drink. She said she then watched the pair move out of her line of sight, according to Brad. Then, according to Brad, she testified to a shocking detail that has not widely been made public. "And then she says a young girl about 18 or 19 years old, she suspected … comes out of the back yelling 'senorita kidnap,' 'senorita kidnap,' more than one time," Brad said. The Bradleys are currently attempting to locate Elizabeth in hopes of gathering more information. Further, Yellow approached Brad at about 7:30 a.m. as he sat on the deck of the ship. Brad was dejected as the immediate search for Amy was unsuccessful. He says that Yellow apologized to him about his missing sister, before any public announcement had been made about Amy's disappearance. "I don't know, but I think [Yellow] went and handed [Amy] off to somebody who took her down into the crew quarters," Brad said, positing a theory about the disappearance. "The two girls that, on the outside, that saw him go up the elevator with her, said that he came down some minutes later by himself and walked directly past them, never looked at him, when he'd been trying to holler at them previously." Over the years, there have been several sightings of a woman believed to be Amy. Tourist Judy Maurer said in the documentary that she witnessed a woman she believed to be Amy while in a public restroom in Barbados, before three men allegedly escorted the woman away. David Carmichael, a Canadian diver, also said in the docuseries that he may have seen Bradley while visiting Curaçao, adding that she was "flanked by two people," one of whom he suspected was "Yellow." Another Curaçao sighting was reported by Navy veteran Bill Hefner, who believes he saw a distressed Bradley at a taboo local bar, but did not report it because of fear of reprisal from his military superiors. From 2002 until 2008, risqué photos bearing a striking resemblance to Amy surfaced on the website of what appears to be a now-defunct Venezuelan tourist escort resort, according to a blog dedicated to finding Amy. Those photos were featured in the docuseries. Other theories have also been posited about her disappearance, mainly that she either fell off the balcony accidentally or jumped off intentionally. The Bradley family vehemently denies either of those explanations. In his heart of hearts, Brad knows Amy is still alive, and so does the rest of the Bradley family. "My parents and I have shared kind of an unexplainable gut feeling in this sense that she's still out there, and I don't know how to better explain that to people or make it more relatable, because it's an unrelatable kind of thing," Brad said. "People just don't understand how we could possibly feel like that, and I can't really explain it, but we do, we've all shared it, we've never talked about her in the past tense." Royal Caribbean did not return a comment request. Neither did Yellow. The FBI declined to comment.
