There were nineteen passengers on board, including four minors Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Sea are suing a cruise line and a former company employee who installed hidden cameras in their guest rooms.
Arvin Joseph Mirasol, a Filipino citizen and former Royal Caribbean crew member named in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, was sentenced in August in Florida to 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to producing child pornography.
The passengers, who are not named in the lawsuit and are referred to by abbreviations, are mostly US citizens from across the country, including New York, Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, while a few passengers are from Canada.
Latest suit, received by Fox News Digital, it comes months after a separate class-action lawsuit was filed in October against Mirasol and the Miami-based shipping company, alleging that as many as 960 people may have been victims of a hidden bathroom camera on the ship.
“This is an extremely unusual case because the group of victims could be nearly 1,000 or more men, women and children,” Spencer Aronfeld, with Aronfeld’s attorneys representing the 19 cruise ship passengers, told Fox News Digital.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Southern District of Florida, names Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. and Arvin crew member Joseph Mirasol as defendants. The picture shows Symphony of the Seas, the ship on which Marisol filmed the passengers without their knowledge. (Photo by Daniel SLIM / AFP)
The new lawsuit alleges that while he was working as a cabin attendant on cruises from December 2023 to February 2024, Mirasol “recorded a video camera containing a memory card in plaintiffs’ passenger cabin bathrooms and captured images of plaintiffs while they were unclothed and engaging in private activities,” without their knowledge or consent, adding that it then uploaded these images “to third parties and/or the world wide web, including but not limited to the dark web.”
“For those whose images were captured, posted online and potentially sold on the dark web – this has caused deep emotional pain, sleepless nights and tearful days,” Aronfeld told Fox News Digital.
Attorneys for the alleged victims also claim in the lawsuit that Royal Caribbean “should have known that sexual assaults were reasonably foreseeable given the prevalence of sexual assaults on board [Royal Caribbean’s] cruise ships.”
There were a total of them 26 sexual assaults and rapes reported during Royal Caribbean’s 2023 cruise and 22 sexual assaults reported during Royal Caribbean’s 2022 cruise, according to the Secretary of Transportation, the documents continue.
The overall data shows that allegations of sexual assault on cruise ships increased in 2023, with 131 sexual crimes reported to the FBI on ships that embarked and disembarked in the United States in 2023, up from 87 in 2022, they wrote. are lawyers.
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Arvin Joseph Mirasol was sentenced Aug. 28 to 30 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. (Broward County Jail)
In addition to the crimes committed on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas, a hidden camera was installed in a public bathroom on the upper deck of another Royal Caribbean cruise ship — Harmony of the Seas — during a cruise that departed Miami on April 29, 2023, the lawsuit alleges. .
The camera allegedly captured more than 150 people, including at least 40 children, using a Royal Caribbean bathroom “in various stages of undress” until the hidden camera was discovered by a passenger on May 1, 2023, lawyers wrote.
Royal Caribbean “failed to take adequate steps and/or provide adequate security and/or training and/or supervision to prevent such sexual assaults, including video voyeurismto occur on its cruise ships,” the lawsuit alleges, adding that the cruise line also “failed to warn its passengers about sexual assaults, including video voyeurism, occurring on its cruise ships.”
The lawyers claim that the motive behind this was “financial in nature”, explaining that Royal Caribbean “deliberately chose not to warn its passengers about sexual assault, including video voyeurism, on its cruises in order not to frighten potential passengers.”
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Partial view of the cruise ship Symphony of the Seas of the American company Royal Caribbean Cruise Limited. (LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)
As a result of Mirasol’s crimes, his alleged victims “suffer severe emotional pain, which manifests itself physically, causing [them] physical illness, sweating, nausea, insomnia, dizziness, crying and physical pain,” their lawyers wrote, adding that the former cruise ship passengers “live in constant fear, reasonable under the circumstances, that images of the plaintiffs undressed while engaged in private activities are regularly viewed and used for illicit purposes.”
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Aronfeld’s trial lawyers, on behalf of the alleged victims, are demanding trial by jury.
“It is our mission to fully investigate this case on behalf of our clients and hold RCL accountable for failing to properly screen, hire, supervise and retain Mr. Mirasol,” Aronfeld told Fox News Digital. “We are confident that the jury will have no problem returning a substantial verdict in favor of the victims.”
Royal Caribbean International did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Christina Coulter contributed to this report.
