Cruise Bruise Blog
October 24, 2009
October 24, 2009
Be A Voice - Speaking Out To Stop Childhood Sexual Abuse On Cruise Ships
While I am very concerned about passengers being caught with child pornography, I am much more concerned with cruise ship workers being caught. These people have immediate access to hundreds of thousands of children annually both on cruise ships and in the third world nations the ships call at and could be vitimizing hundreds of children each year.
On October 6, 2009 a child reported a sexual assault aboard P&O Pacific Sun. The ship embarked out of Brisbane, Australia for a seven-day cruise. She was allegedly attacked four days into the cruise while the ship was off the coast of Noumea, New Caledonia. No arrest has been made to date. This attack took place en route to a child molester hot spot.
There are troubling trends when shipping lanes are examined. For example, we now have two arrests, Menandro Lim Lanzar, arrested yesterday and Hendri Dharmawa, currently in jail after his conviction, at the Port Of Halifax, Nova Scotia in less than two months.
It is a well-known fact that Americans are traveling by cruise ship to attain child pornography or to engage in sex with children prefer the near proximity of the Caribbean Islands and Central America nations. We had the arrest of Clay W Long found disembarking the Legend of the Seas in Tampa when he returned from a Eastern Caribbean cruise with child pornography on his laptop.
As well there was the case of Timothy David Webb returning from Bermuda to Norfolk, Virginia aboard Grandeur of the Seas with child pornography on his laptop, some of it involving children as young as eight-years-old. Webb was a registered sex offender at the time who had been a Marine Corps military police officer before he was dishonorable discharged.
Much more troubling is the case of Charles L. Chandler who was arrested for child pornography while in the military. Chandler took his child pornography to four American military bases as well as a base in England and another in Qatar where he was arrested. Chandler was arrested in October 2006, but images of the children went back as far as 2002.
When arrested, police found a journal entry documenting a sexual encounter with a child while he was aboard a cruise ship. This case clearly draws the connection between international travel and sex with children aboard cruise ships. It is unclear if any of the images found on his computer were of the child he was involved with on the cruise ship.
Child molesters seek out poor third world nations, where poverty prevails in abundant numbers, parents sell their children into sexual slavery in order to feed their families and the government is ineffectual in stopping crimes against children. They also seek out places children are left unsupervised or are left under their supervision. Such places would include a cruise ship.
Both convicted child molesters, Danny John Hanoian who worked as the Youth Activities Coordinator aboard Norwegian Cruise Lines' Norway and Jeremy Pike, Adventure Of The Seas, worked as crew aboard cruise ships.
Hanoian raped a 12-year-old female passengers aboard Norway while the ship was on a Caribbean cruise.
Pike drugged, then raped the children seen in the photographs, one as young as six-years-old. Pike's extensive collection of child pornography included non-sexual photographs of him with children while aboard the cruise ship. It is not known if any of the photographs of him having sex with children were taken aboard the cruise ships.
In Australia, the chosen route is to impoverished island nations such as Fiji and New Caledonia. The problem is so widespread there, not only has the United Nations addressed the issue but, the government of Australia specifically warns their citizens not to go to New Caledonia to molest children.
Numerous child molesters and sex offenders have been arrested in recent years after boarding cruise ships in Australia, headed to New Caledonia.
A look at Fiji, paints a dim view of the government's approach on child molesters. Fiji, a military-led government blacks out all information on childhood sexual abuse as well as women who are raped. There is no public awareness of the problem at all. Fiji censors all media publications, with articles having to go past the censors before they can be printed. Sex is a topic not permitted, even when it involves a crime such as rape.
The problem in Fiji dates back many years. Mark Lawrence Mutch, 41, an accountant working in the Fijian capital of Suva sent his computer to be repaired in Australia back in August 1997. When the machine was being repaired, hundreds of images of adult men having sex with children who lived in Fiji were found. The find unfolded a part of a large and well-organized child sex ring that had been operating in the country for some time. Mutch received a sentence of 13 years for his crimes.
In Fiji, the Mutch case, as it unfolded confirmed suspicions that the Pacific region had become a new target for Australian pedophiles fleeing police crack downs on child sex offences at home and elsewhere in Asia.
Since 911, there is a perception that anything and everything an airline passenger takes with them to board an airplane will be thoroughly inspected. This has likely pushed child pornography collectors and child molesters onto cruise ships, where security when boarding is much more slack.
Prior to 911, the cases of passengers traveling via cruise ship to have sex with children are hard to come by. The problem has appeared to have escalated not only due to increased cruise ship access with more ships on the seas, but also in the past eight years the use of laptops and their passage onto cruise ship has risen dramatically.
The internet has given pedophiles access to the locations of more hot spots ripe for pedophiles through others who engage in these crimes against children. The expansion of cruise lines into more American as well as international ports, has also made it faster and easier for pedophiles to board a ship after land travel, avoiding the airlines.
Queen Ifica has a video out, Daddy, covering the topic of child molestation in a Jamaican family. You can view it here
The video below, Be A Voice, is sung by Yvonne Goss. She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. The song includes contributions by Becky Stewart, Johnny Stewart, Terry Morris, Pat Morris, Victor Banks and Doris Banks.
