Disney Cover-Up of Child Molestation

[boulders]

Orlando News

 

As reported in the video in the link, a young girl was molested on Disney Dream while it was docked in Port Canaveral. Despite the crime being reported to Disney 2 hours before the ship sailed, Disney did not report the crime to local authorities. Instead, they put the offending crew member on a plane to his home country. So, not only did they not report the crime in an expedient manner, they aided and abetted the perpetrator's escape from authorities.

[Daisyloo]

That's awful for that poor girl. Shame on Disney.

[RSLeesburg]

I agree that Disney should be ashamed for not reporting this sooner. However, if you watch the news report, you will see that the ship's security immediately opened an incident report, questioned the witness, reviewed the video tape, and identified the suspect - but by time they identified the suspect, it was just 16 minutes till they were to sail.

 

So, the question is who was told by security about the incident and who made the decision to not contact the police. I do not know if these decisions reside within security, with one of the officers, or the captain. I doubt very much if any one within DCL outside of a few on the ship had any knowledge of this incident until after the ship set sail. So, I cannot blame "Disney" as a whole for this decision. Someone is to blame, and I hope they get fired for it, but you cannot really hold the entire cruise line to blame for one sick individual.

 

Secondly, once they were at sea, they did report the incident, and the investigation was handed over the local police force in the Bahamas. The individual did confess, but by this time the family did not want to press charges. So, without knowing the local laws, I am not sure if they could prosecute if the girl/ family did not want to press charges. I am not even sure how that works here in the US (and I should after watching years of Law and Order). But, if the girl/family did not want to press charges, it appears that the local police could not do anything but release the individual.

 

After that Disney has a no win situation. They have an individual who has been fired for an unspeakable incident, but he cannot be arrested or tried for it. However, Disney does have a legal contract that says they must pay for his flight home - so that is what they did. I am sure they were not happy about it, or wanted to do it, or did it to "aid and abet" his escape. If they had wanted to truly cover this up and help him escape, they would have spirited him off the ship and never alerted the local police. I think they had no other options - it's not like they could physically restrain the individual and haul him back to the US (I think that's called kidnapping).

 

Overall, this will be a big black stain on Disney, but really is solely the fault of one or two (probably) officers/individuals on that ship who decided not to contact the PC police force, and when the smoke clears, I think these folks will be identified and fired because of it...

[queenL]

Wow! We were just on the Disney Dream. I cannot imagine why the parents did not want to press charges.