The victim, now 21, has spoken about her experience for the first time. (BuzzFeed News is referring to her as “G” to protect her identity.) G., then just 11 years old, was going on vacation with her grandmother and little sister and was excited about the vacation. “Automatically, as a kid, you think it’s great,” he said.
Before the ship leaves for the Caribbean, G. gets the Wi-Fi password. went down, he told BuzzFeed News. “I asked the guy outside the restaurant for directions to the lobby,” he recalled. “And when he guided me, he immediately took hold of my breasts.”
G. She ran to the lobby in search of someone who could tell her the Wi-Fi password. She said she was “afraid to go in the same direction” on the way back because she might cross paths with the man who touched her. But she had to go back to her room and was afraid of getting lost in the giant ship.
G. Walking past the restaurant, she boarded the elevator. The same employee followed him, closing the doors. “He said, ‘Can I have a kiss?’ she remembered. “I kissed him on the cheek, and he said, ‘No, no.'” She then alleged that the employee leaned down and kissed her on the mouth.
After he let her go, G. She ran to her room in tears. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
She said she told her grandmother why she was so distraught, and she went to the lobby to report what happened to guest services. He asked about the incident and how the employee was doing and assured them that it would be investigated, G said.
Taplin, who was on board at the time, said he viewed elevator surveillance footage, which corroborated the child’s version of events. Later, G. was asked to identify the assailants by looking at the photographs of the four employees. Taplin and G. According to both, the girl identified the assailant as a waiter at one of the ship’s restaurants.
Taplin said he did his best to investigate the case but was hampered throughout the process. She claimed she told a senior officer on the ship to call the FBI while the boat was still docked in Port Canaveral, Florida. But the officer decided to leave at 5 p.m. and didn’t notify the FBI until the ship was in international waters.
Later, Taplin said, the senior officer interviewed the accused staff. An official report of the meeting, obtained by BuzzFeed News, states that staff members “reluctantly, but ultimately denied kissing the girl” and only offered “a high five and a hug.”
What was not included in the report, Taplin said, was that during the meeting, the officer threatened the guard, “I’m going to cut your dick off right now,” and that he would remove the guard’s testicles and “put his balls in his mouth.”
The next day the ship docked in the Bahamas, where local police officers arrived. According to Taplin, police threatened the alleged assailant and pressured him to confess. “It’s so wrong,” Taplin said. “I mean, you red-handed him for what he did, right?”
In the end, Taplin signed a statement allegedly written by Bahamian police. “I touched her right breast with my left hand,” the signed confession said. Taplin noted, however, that the suspect was not arrested. Instead, he was sent back to the Indian state of Goa.
G said she was so scared for the rest of the holiday 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 stops at Castaway Cay, a private Caribbean island owned by Disney, because she knew her attacker wouldn’t be there.
After G. reported the attack, Disney instructed an employee who was cleaning her room to demonstrate how he made small animals out of towels, and they put a princess bedspread on her bed. “But that was basically it,” he said. G. said her family only heard from Disney once, after she got home from her cruise, that the accused staff member had been deported.