Cruise Lines Spent $70M to Block the Rules That Protect Kids

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[00:00:00]This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brusky.

[00:00:04]Here now, Tony Brusky.

[00:00:07]All right, here we are. Part five in our series about that.

[00:00:16]June 2nd, 2006, the Deputy Director of the FBI's National Security Branch retired from federal service and 3 days later, 3 days, starts working for Royal Caribbean.

[00:00:29]Okay.

[00:00:30]His name is Gary M.

[00:00:33]Bald.

[00:00:34]And he's not the only one who walked through that door. Why does that matter?

[00:00:38]We're about to get into that. This is our final episode in this five-part series. If you want the fourth full thing, all the other episodes, just go back in our feed, they're right there. Over the past four episodes, I have laid out the cases, the pattern, the access, the justice gap. If you have been with me from the beginning, you know the things about the cruise ship industry that most passengers never learn.

[00:01:02]Knowledge is power and well, you have some more knowledge.

[00:01:07]You know that according to a Cruise Law News, nearly 200 crew members have been accused of possessing C salmon in approximately over 2 years. That's just just 2 years. These are the ones that they caught. Uh you know that crew members across every major cruise line have been arrested, charged, convicted, or deported in connection with that sort of material.

[00:01:27]And that in many cases, they were deported without a single file charged.

[00:01:32]What? Go back and watch the other episodes. Yeah.

[00:01:37]Yeah, cuz if you don't file charges, there's no trial and there's no publicity and and then it looks, you know, better for the cruise line rather than preventing, you know, more people from being hurt.

[00:01:49]You know that a third of cruise ship uh assault survivors on cruise ships were minors and according to congressional reports, that is true. You know that the New York Times found only 13 prosecutions and seven convictions for cruise ship essay in an entire decade.

[00:02:09]You know, that they've gotten that far.

[00:02:10]The rest have been handled by NDAs, deportations, and you know, blacks reporting.

[00:02:16]Uh you know that the people who investigate uh things on these ships like this work for the cruise line initially.

[00:02:23]There's no police on board independently. Everybody works for the cruise line.

[00:02:27]Uh that uh settlements come with NDAs and that the system moves in one direction, away from public accountability. This episode is about why it stays that way.

[00:02:39]Seems like a broken system. Why don't we have reform? Who built this machine? Who feeds it?

[00:02:45]And what has to change to protect the families who keep buying tickets, like you and me, hm?

[00:02:54]So, Bald going over to Royal Caribbean not an isolated case. Charles Dar, former US Coast Guard officer, became vice president for technical and regulatory affairs at CLIA, the Cruise Line International Association, the trade group that lobbies on behalf of virtually every major cruise line in the world. The man who used to help enforce maritime safety rules for the federal government now works for the organization whose job is to influence those same rules on behalf of the industry. This is what a revolving door looks like. The people who are supposed to hold the industry accountable walk through a door and start collecting paychecks from the companies they used to oversee.

[00:03:34]It happens in a lot of industries.

[00:03:37]In the cruise industry, it happens with the specific agencies responsible for safety, crime enforcement, and immigration.

[00:03:44]The exact levers that determine whether a predator on a cruise ship faces justice or gets a plane ticket home.

[00:03:51]Now, I'm not saying it's not a bad move for someone to go from that position to this position. In theory, be fairly qualified to know what the problems are, how to fix them, where the weak spots are, but is that really what's happening?

[00:04:05]The money behind this is substantial.

[00:04:08]According to Open Secrets and cruise industry researcher Dr. Ross Klein, the Cruise Lines International Association and its member company spent over $56 million lobbying Congress through 2016.

[00:04:21]Between 2020 and 2024, the industry reportedly spent another $23 million.

[00:04:26]CLIA alone spent $1.38 million in 2015.

[00:04:30]Carnival Corporation added that nearly 900,000 that year.

[00:04:37]Plus additional spending through subsidiary subsidiaries, Carnival Cruise Line and Holland America Line. Royal Caribbean spent 464,000 in direct congressional donations through the same period.

[00:04:49]The cumulative lobbying lobbying spent since 1997 is estimated about $70 million directed at Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, the US Coast Guard, the Transportation Department, and the Justice Department. Those are the agencies that control safety regulations, crime reporting, immigration enforcement, and prosecution. Those are the exact agencies whose decisions determine what happens when a crew member is caught with that sort of material on a ship full of families.

[00:05:20]The industry does not want to does not just operate within the rules. It spends tens of millions of dollars a year influencing the people who write them, and they have a vested interest in things working as they have been.

[00:05:38]Because it does keep a pretty good lid on things for the most part.

[00:05:44]Doesn't help humans or or work in a way that prevents more people from being hurt.

[00:05:52]It's just it's very good at at covering tracks.

[00:05:56]It's very good at not letting you see what's behind the curtain. It's it's very good at those things.

[00:06:05]Have those ever been good things for anyone other than a company or an image?

[00:06:11]Are those good things for a 6-year-old?

[00:06:13]Are those good things for a mom and dad?

[00:06:15]Are those good things for a human being?

[00:06:16]For humanity? For people? Your customers?

[00:06:20]Or are they good for, you know, letting those customers believe in a false sense of security that truly does not exist on your boats.

[00:06:33]As long as they don't know.

[00:06:36]Well, no harm, no foul. Until there is. Then there's let's sign an NDA, let's pay you off, let's shut you up. We've already deported them.

[00:06:46]Seems to kind of be a pattern.

[00:06:49]The Congressional Cruise Caucus exists.

[00:06:52]Members of Congress take cruises. The industry hosts events, funds campaigns, and maintains direct access to lawmakers. Representative Doris Matsui, who introduced an earlier version of what became the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, described the experience of trying to pass legislation against the industry's opposition. Her words, "They have a really strong lobby operation. They are definitely very powerful.

[00:07:19]We felt like David and Goliath. We were the small ones fighting this battle."

[00:07:25]Let me tell you what that Goliath fought to protect.

[00:07:29]Every major cruise line operating from US ports registers its ships under foreign flags. Panama, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Malta. It's called flag of convenience registration, and it is the foundation of the entire business model.

[00:07:42]By registering ships abroad, cruise lines place their vessels under the regulatory framework of those flag states rather than the US. The most significant benefit is tax-related, at least on paper it is. Under Section 883 of the US tax code, non-American firms engaged in maritime transport are exempt from paying federal corporate tax income taxes on their profits.

[00:08:03]The cruise lines qualify because their ships are technically foreign. It does not matter that their passengers are overwhelmingly American, and that their marketing targets American families, that their economic activity generates billions of dollars within that American economy, or that their corporate headquarters sit in Miami.

[00:08:20]The ships are registered to Panama, so the profits flow tax-free. But, the tax benefit is only half of the equation.

[00:08:27]The other half is jurisdictional. When a crime occurs on a foreign-flagged ship sailing in international waters, the flag state has primary jurisdiction.

[00:08:37]That means Panama or the Bahamas technically has first authority over criminal matters. And Panama is not investigating assaults on cruise ships. The Bahamas is not prosecuting child exploitation cases from international waters. The FBI can investigate under certain conditions, particularly when ships dock at US ports, but the practical barriers getting agents aboard, navigating international maritime law, coordinating with foreign governments creates friction at every step. The tax advantage and the accountability gap are the same policy. Register foreign to avoid US taxes, register foreign to dilute US criminal jurisdiction.

[00:09:19]The families buying the tickets are American, the profits flow to American-headquartered companies, but the legal framework the industry operates under is deliberately constructed to minimize American oversight. Nobody tells you that when you click book now.

[00:09:35]The law that was supposed to fix this, the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010, was the result of years of grinding advocacy by the International Cruise Victims Association, a grassroots organization built by families who had been harmed at sea.

[00:09:51]They fought for mandatory crime reporting, video surveillance, evidence preservation, training, and public disclosure. What they got was a law that requires cruise lines to report certain crimes to the FBI and publish the numbers.

[00:10:05]What they did not get was independent investigation authority, a prosecution mandate, enforcement penalties, mandatory background checks against international databases, device screening requirements, or disclosure of how reported cases were actually resolved. The CVSSA created the minimum.

[00:10:27]And the industry fought even that.

[00:10:33]Laurie Dishman was assaulted on a Royal Caribbean ship. She became one of the key advocates behind the CVSSA. She pushed for specific safety improvements after her assault. According to reporting, the company did not engage with her recommendations and kept offering more money.

[00:10:49]She eventually settled but refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. She told the New York Times, "I knew the only way to bring about any change was to go public." She went to Congress. Her recommendations were included in the 2010 law, and she says the law's impact has been limited by the lack of independent oversight. 15 years later, the prosecution rate for cruise ship essays is still in the single digits per year across the entire industry. CLIA's public position is this: The cruise industry is one of the most controlled, regulated, and monitored in the world.

[00:11:22]They They point out that hotels, theme parks, and airlines are not required to report essays the way cruise lines are under the CVSSA if they actually do it.

[00:11:34]That framing is technically accurate and profoundly misleading.

[00:11:38]Hotels do not have crew members with master key cards who live on site for months in confined environments with your kids.

[00:11:46]Theme parks do not employ international workers screened only against home country databases that may have no records to share.

[00:11:55]Airlines do not operate multi-day enclosed environments where alcohol is promoted through unlimited drink packages and children are dropped off at supervised care programs staffed by peoples who vet whose vetting parents can't verify.

[00:12:10]The comparison is meaningless.

[00:12:13]The cruise ship is not a hotel. It's a floating city with its own police force that works for the company. It's own jurisdiction that answers to Panama.

[00:12:23]It's own rules that nobody outside the industry gets to audit.

[00:12:27]>> [snorts] >> Every cruise line uses the phrase zero tolerance when a crew member is caught.

[00:12:33]I've heard it in every statement from every company across this investigation. Zero tolerance is a reactive posture. It means after we catch them, we fire them. It says nothing about what happens before the catch.

[00:12:48]The industry has not publicly adopted mandatory device screening for crew, has not created a funded or funded an international maritime offender registry, has not mandated independent third-party investigation of allegations, has not ended the use of non-disclosure agreements in settlements involving kids. Zero tolerance without structural prevention is not a policy.

[00:13:10]IT IS A TALKING POINT.

[00:13:13]SO, what actually has to change?

[00:13:18]I'm going to lay out the reforms that advocates, maritime attorneys, and child safety experts have been calling for. And I'm going to anchor each one to a specific case from this series so you can see exactly what it would have prevented. Okay?

[00:13:37]And again, if you've not commented yet or given your thoughts, please do in the comment section, Substack YouTube. Links are in the descriptions.

[00:13:45]Device screening for crew. Mandatory.

[00:13:49]At the point of hiring and at regular [clears throat] intervals during employment. If this existed, the phones seized from the Disney Dream crew, Nery Trazo Gonzalez, all allegedly carrying CSAM material, might have been flagged before those individuals ever served a family dinner.

[00:14:10]The NCMEC pipeline catches material that gets uploaded to tech platforms, but if a crew member possesses material that was never flagged by an algorithm, the only thing that catches it is a CBP agent at a US port. Device screening at hiring closes the gap. The technology exists. The cruise lines have not adopted it.

[00:14:31]An international maritime offender registry. Right now, the 27 people deported from San Diego this last other week have no record following them.

[00:14:40]According to Cruise Law News, deported crew members can be rehired by other companies because no shared database exists. If a registry existed, a crew member deported for alleged CSAM involvement will be flagged the next by the next manning agency, the next cruise line, the next port. Their name would raise an alert instead of sailing on through.

[00:15:04]Without that registry, every deportation without prosecution is a clean record handed to someone the system has already identified as a risk. And as of right now, uh out of sight, out of mind it seems.

[00:15:18]That's your problem now.

[00:15:21]You know, like our education system does in this country.

[00:15:25]That's a whole other At the end of the day, we just live in a world where nobody wants to be accountable.

[00:15:31]Everything you think that's there to protect you is inherently not.

[00:15:36]Prosecution before deportation for CSA offenses, federal law provides serious penalties for possession and distribution of that type of material.

[00:15:46]Deportation without prosecution creates no deterrent.

[00:15:50]It denies victims any path to justice, denies no public record, and returns the offenders to the global workforce with nothing on their record.

[00:16:00]Just more people they met on the ship.

[00:16:03]Other folks like themselves who may be dealing in the same sort of crap.

[00:16:09]And more opportunities to capture it.

[00:16:12]With every magical moment, every case that ends in deportation instead of prosecution sends the same message. The worst that happens is you go home.

[00:16:22]Oh, that message is heard loud and clear by the people we most need to deter.

[00:16:28]Prosecution before removal creates consequences. Consequences create deterrents. Deterrents protects the kids on the next ship. And right now we're doing none of it.

[00:16:39]Independent investigation of all the allegations, the cruise line's private security team should not be the primary investigator of crimes that create liability for the cruise line.

[00:16:51]That is a conflict of interest so fundamental that it would not be tolerated in any other context. An independent third-party body, one that does not answer to the cruise line, should handle evidence collection, witness interviews, and case referrals to federal law enforcement.

[00:17:06]An end to non-disclosure agreements in cases involving the SA of minors.

[00:17:15]No corporation should be able to purchase the silence of a family whose child was harmed in their care.

[00:17:20]Every NDA is a warning that never reaches the next family. Every settled case that disappears behind a confidentiality clause is a data point erased from the public's ability to assess risk.

[00:17:35]If cruise lines cannot prevent these assaults, the minimum standard should be that the families who experience them are free to speak.

[00:17:45]And by the way, people who are under NDAs, go talk to an attorney because you know what NDAs don't do?

[00:17:52]They don't cover criminal behavior.

[00:17:54]They don't. They don't stand up, like ever.

[00:17:58]I'm not here to give you legal advice, so like I said, go talk to an attorney.

[00:18:02]But if you are under one, it may not be as strong as you think, especially today.

[00:18:09]Mandatory crew to child ratios and licensing standards for youth programs that actually match land-based child care regulations would also be a lovely touch.

[00:18:19]If a daycare in Topeka or Toledo or Tampa has to meet state licensing standards with mandated ratios, inspection schedules, and background check requirements, the kids club on a cruise ship carrying 5,000 people should meet them, too.

[00:18:34]According to the FBI affidavit, Caster allegedly operated in a youth center for 4 months, allegedly abusing multiple children while deliberately avoiding security cameras. The screening and supervision standards that would make that harder to accomplish on land do not exist at sea.

[00:18:50]That has to end.

[00:18:52]I started this series by telling you I love cruises, and I still do. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend I will look at them the same way after spending weeks inside this story.

[00:19:05]Every case I told you about, Darmi Metta watching her server get loaded into an unmarked van in handcuffs. A 6-year-old telling her parents what CJ did while she played a video game. A mother finding a hidden recording device in her family's cabin.

[00:19:21]A teenager groomed by the man whose job was to entertain children on an Alaskan family cruise. A stateroom attendant who pled guilty to concealing himself inside guest cabins to secretly record passengers as young as two. Nearly 200 crew accused across the industry in roughly 2 years. 27 deported from San Diego without a single criminal charge.

[00:19:40]An industry that spends tens of millions of dollars making sure the rules do not change.

[00:19:46]Every one of those cases happened inside a system that is working exactly the way the industry built it to work.

[00:19:55]This is not about one company, not one ship, not one cruise line. It's about an industry that has constructed through lobbying, through foreign flag registration, through non-disclosure agreements, through deportation over prosecution, and through self-policing that answers to no one outside the company. A system that structurally insulates itself from accountability when children are harmed. That is not a failure, that is a design choice, and it has been funded, defended, and maintained for decades.

[00:20:28]I'm not telling you not to take your family on a cruise. I'm telling you to demand better.

[00:20:34]Ask the cruise line what background checks were performed on the crew interacting with your children. Ask whether crew devices are screened. Ask what specific protocols exist in the youth center beyond cameras and name tags. Ask what happens when someone is caught with child material on their phone, and if the answer is, "We have a zero tolerance policy." Ask them what that actually means before the catch.

[00:20:59]Because right now for too many families it means nothing until it's too late.

[00:21:11]>> The name of this show is Hidden Killers.

[00:21:12]Sometimes the thing hiding in plain sight is not a person, it's a system.

[00:21:18]One that has been designed, funded, and defended to keep the truth about what happens on these ships invisible.

[00:21:26]Until now.

[00:21:30]I'm Tony Brusky. Thanks for staying with us on this.

[00:21:33]Protect your family, demand answers.

[00:21:37]And do not let this story disappear the way the industry wants it to. Share it.

[00:21:43]Comment. Let them know you give a [ __ ] And you're not going to take their BS answers going forward. If they start seeing enough people going, "Yeah, we're not booking a cruise." Why? Here's why.

[00:21:55]That's how change happens. Because you tell them, "No more. Here's why. This is unacceptable." And if enough people start saying, "No.

[00:22:07]Not going and here's why."

[00:22:09]They have to change.

[00:22:16]You have no customers, you go out of business.

[00:22:19]So, demand the change.

[00:22:22]And for the love of God, cruise industry, change. Enough people love you.

[00:22:30]It's a lovely way to travel.

[00:22:32]It makes for great memories and a great family vacation. Hopefully, none of these things happen to you and it can be that as it is for thousands of people.

[00:22:41]Far more than it actually victimizes.

[00:22:45]But to stand here and pretend that none of that exists is irresponsible, it's ignorant, and it's extremely unethical.

[00:22:58]Do the right thing.

[00:22:59]I know you probably won't until you're forced.

[00:23:03]But that's why we're here.

[00:23:04]To share the stories.

[00:23:08]And hold truth to power.

[00:23:12]Your thoughts, your stories in the comment section on Substack and YouTube.

[00:23:15]I'd love to see them.

[00:23:17]We'll continue our conversation there.

[00:23:19]And be sure to press subscribe.

[00:23:21]Until next time, I'm Tony Bruski. We'll talk again real soon.

[00:23:26]Want more on this case and others?

[00:23:28]>> [music] >> Then press subscribe now. And don't miss a moment of true crime coverage [music] from Tony Bruski and the Hidden Killers Podcast.