Criminals are more likely to get away with serious crimes on cruise ships than anywhere else, a maritime lawyer has warned, with 200 people vanishing at sea worldwide in the past decade.
Jim Walker said about half the disappearances have some factor of foul play.
“The place to get away with a crime is on a cruise ship,” he told the SBS program Dateline.
“The place to be a sexual predator and prey on children is on a cruise ship.
“If you’re a rapist, you’re more likely to get away with it committing the crime on a cruise ship on the high seas.
“All of this is happening out in international waters, typically.
“There are no policemen on the scene… You can’t summons a police officer who will run onto the crime scene. So they’re out there by themselves.”
In Australia, the death of Australian woman Dianne Brimble received widespread media coverage with strong criticism of the party culture that existed aboard cruise ships.
Ms Brimble died aboard a P&O Cruise ship of a drug overdose after consuming a date rape drug and is alleged to have received callous treatment from passengers she was with at the time of taking the drug.
Mr Walker said the cruise industry knew it had a problem more than a decade ago and tried to fix it through slick advertising and marketing, rather than taking the hard steps they needed to really clean their act up.
“You have cabin attendants now who are being hired from Third World countries – no disrespect to small Cibian islands – that have no databases.
“You can’t track them even if you wanted to.
