During the weekend, an Illinois man accused of being a sexual predator was told by a judge that he could not go on a cruise he and his wife had booked. This seemed a reasonable legal response to most observers. The man’s attorney said there might not even be kids on the cruise…the judge said prove it.
However, it raised the uncomfortable issue nobody likes to discuss: How safe are kids (or anyone, for that matter) on cruise ships that could be carrying sexual predators or pedophiles?
Maritime lawyer Jim Walker, who’s a watchdog on personal injury law at sea, asks if cruise lines should be doing background checks on all its passengers. He has a series of articles addressing this whole subject on his website.
There are security checks prior to boarding a ship that are designed to prevent passengers from taking instruments of danger onto the ship, whatever they may be. If the instrument is a sick mind, who’s going to find that?
Cruise lines — at least three have been known to have incidents of sexual abuse on their ships — say little publicly and they’d clearly like this problem to go away, because it’s bad for business. On the other hand, if background checks have to be done by cruise lines, shouldn’t they also be required for all-inclusive resorts.
Where does it end?
Presumably there would be a cost attached to it. How much? Have you seen what’s happened since airlines and airports began enhancing security since 9-11?