Cruise industry safety topic of hearing

To Whom It May Concern:

We came across this information in the trades and thought it would be of
interest to this newsgroup as well. If this is somehow a repeat of an
earlier post, sorry we missed it. This can always be ignored or deleted.



An Arizona father whose daughter's cruise ship disappearance went
unreported, a Connecticut couple who had nearly $7,000 worth of jewelry
stolen while on a cruise and the son of Vietnamese immigrants who
mysteriously disappeared from a Caribbean cruise are among a dozen people
scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

This is the second of two hearings Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., is
co-sponsoring in Washington to address cruise ship safety. FBI and cruise
industry officials testified at the first meeting in December. Passengers
and their families will have an opportunity to speak at this hearing. Both
were prompted by the disappearance of Greenwich's George A. Smith IV from a
honeymoon cruise in the Mediterranean. While Royal Caribbean International
has said it responded appropriately to Smith's disappearance, his family has
said the company did not do enough to protect Smith and investigate what
happened. Intense media attention in the case has spawned public scrutiny of
the cruise industry and inspired the advocacy group International Cruise
Victims. Shays said he wants to publicize the plight of families who have
fallen victim to cruise ship tragedies and to advocate for changes to the
industry, particularly when it comes to reporting crimes aboard ships. "I am
working on a bipartisan legislative proposal to improve disclosure of crimes
on cruise ships in order to increase the transparency of the industry,"
Shays said in an e-mail sent by his spokeswoman. "Passengers have a right to
know the safety record of the vessels they board." While Smith's family and
his wife, Jennifer Hagel Smith, are holding separate press conferences prior
to the 2 p.m. Tuesday hearing, they are not expected to testify in front of
Congress members. They have chosen to step aside to let other people
describe the tragedies that have happened to them, said Kendall Carver,
president of International Cruise Victims and the Arizona father of a
40-year-old woman who went missing from an Alaskan cruise two years ago.
"They felt they had had a great deal of publicity and it's a larger issue
than the Smiths," said Carver, whose daughter's disappearance went
unreported by cruise personnel even though at least one crew member noticed
she had vanished. The victims' group wants Congress to enact legislation to
force the cruise industry to be held more accountable for crimes and
tragedies aboard their ships, Carver said. Currently, the cruise industry
voluntarily reports crimes to the FBI and varying policing authorities.
"Until these things are cleaned up, maybe it's not appropriate that you land
here," Carver said he wants Congress to tell cruise companies.
Representatives of the cruise industry have said the voluntary reporting
policy is working and that cruises have a relatively low crime rate. Cruise
ships worldwide carried more than 30 million passengers over a three-year
period, according to data given to congressional staff. The data also showed
that during a three-year period, 177 reports of allegedly unlawful sexual
acts or contacts occurred, 28 people disappeared and there were four
robberies of items valued at more than $5,000. Part of the problem is that
sometimes proper authorities are not notified of the crime, said Ira and
Myra Leonard, two retired Hamden history professors who had nearly $7,000
worth of jewelry stolen from their cabin after embarking on a cruise from
Bayonne, N.J., in 2004. The couple said that, because their loss totaled
less than $10,000, the cruise line said it would not report the larceny to
the FBI. "Our case is very interesting because we followed it up," Ira
Leonard said, adding that he thinks the cruise line had security lapses that
allowed the thefts to occur. "My wife and I have pursued it based on the
principle." Leonard will testify at Tuesday's hearing, as will Son Pham of
Bellevue, Wash., whose parents' disappearance last May from a Caribbean
cruise ship has been labeled a suicide. But Pham said he doubts that is what
happened because after the cruise, the couple, who escaped from Vietnam in
1975 at the end of the war, had planned to return to their native country
for the first time in 30 years. He thinks the cruise ship had unsafe
conditions that led to the couple's disappearance overboard. "I don't mind
going over it over and over again and I'm sure I'll do the same thing on
Tuesday," Pham said. "Mom and Dad weren't ready to leave us and we weren't
ready to lose them." Pham said he has come to accept his parents' death, but
that he wants to help make cruise ships safer. "I'm kind of at peace knowing
that my parents are together in a good place," he said. "It's not about the
Pham family anymore. It's about what's right."


Happy sailing,
John Sisker
SHIP-TO-SHORE CRUISE AGENCY®
(714) 536-3850 or toll free at
(800) 724-6644 & (pagoo ID: 714.536.3850)
http://www.shiptoshorecruise.com