According to the New York Times, the world’s largest cruise line, Carnival, has admitted that its crew members were accused of sexual assault 62 separate times within the past 5 years. The company has investigated each these cases, which occurred once a month on average, but has not released any details to the public.
Carnival’s admission marks the first time a cruise company has publicly acknowledged that harassment and assault have occurred on its ships. Curtis Mase, a lawyer for the Carnival Cruise Lines, commented “Do these statistics suggest that Carnival ships are unsafe? Absolutely not.”
Carnival first minimized the seriousness of the assaults in a November statement which read, “it is at least 10 times more likely for a sexual assault to occur in a small town in America than on a cruise ship.”
The majority of the cases involved passengers and crew members. Media allegedly became aware of the story after a former employee filed suit against the company, claiming that she was attacked by an officer aboard a Carnival ship last August.