Now 21 years old, the alleged victim has spoken about her experience for the first time. (BuzzFeed News refers to her as “G.” to protect her identity.) So, at only 11 years old, G. was on the cruise with her grandmother and her little sister and she was excited for the holidays. “Automatically, as a kid, you think it’s going to be amazing,” she said.
Before the ship left for the Caribbean, G. went downstairs to get the Wi-Fi password, he told BuzzFeed News. “I asked the person outside the restaurant to show me how to get to the lobby,” he recalled. “And when he led me, he immediately grabbed my tits.”
G. ran to the lobby looking for someone who could tell him the Wi-Fi password. She said that she “was afraid to go in the same direction” on the way back because she might pass the man who had touched her. But she needed to get back to her room and she was afraid of getting lost in the giant ship.
As G. passed the restaurant, he entered an elevator. She said the same employee followed her inside, blocking the doors. “He said, ‘Can I have a kiss?’” she recalled. “I gave him a kiss on the cheek and he said, ‘No, not there.'” She then claimed that the clerk leaned in and kissed her on the mouth.
After he let her go, G. ran to her room crying. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said.
She said she told her grandmother why she was so upset and they went to the lobby to report what happened to guest services. G. said they asked him about the incident and how the employee looked and promised they would look into it.
Taplin, who was on board at the time, said he saw surveillance footage from the elevator, which confirmed the girl’s version of events. Later, G. said he was asked to identify the attacker by looking at photos of four employees. According to Taplin and G., the girl identified the attacker as a waiter in one of the ship’s restaurants.
Taplin said she did her best to investigate the case, but claimed she was obstructed throughout the process. He claimed that he told one of the ship’s senior officers to call the FBI while the ship was still docked in Port Canaveral, Florida. But the officer decided to set sail around 5 p.m. and did not inform the FBI until the ship was in international waters.
Then, Taplin said, the superior officer interviewed the accused crew member while she was present. The official report of the meeting, obtained by BuzzFeed News, states that the crew member “hesitated, but eventually denied kissing the girl” and only gave her a “high five and a hug.”
Taplin said that what was not included in the report was that during the meeting, the officer threatened the crew member, saying, “I’m going to cut your dick off right now” and that he would remove his testicles and “put his balls in his mouth.” .
When the ship docked in the Bahamas the next day, local police officers arrived. According to Taplin, the police reprimanded and threatened the alleged attacker, pressuring him to confess. “It was so bad,” Taplin said. “I mean, you’ve got him red-handed with what he’d done, right?”
In the end, he signed a statement that Taplin said was written by the Bahamas police. “I touched her right breast with my left hand,” says the signed confession. However, Taplin noted that the alleged suspect was not arrested. Instead, he was repatriated to the Indian state of Goa.
G. said she was so scared for the rest of the vacation that she didn’t want to leave her grandmother’s side and never felt safe on board again. She said she could only relax during a stop at Castaway Cay, a private Caribbean island owned by Disney, because she knew her attacker would not be there.
After G. reported the attack, she said Disney instructed the employee who was cleaning her room to demonstrate how they created little animals out of the towels and put a princess quilt on her bed. “But that was basically it,” she said. After returning home from his cruise, G. said his family only heard once from Disney to tell them the accused crew member had been deported.
