Sex Assault Victims on Cruise Ships Are Often Under 18

BEDFORD, Texas — As the Fourth of July weekend begins, families across the country are making summer vacation plans and many will go on a cruise hoping for the trip of a lifetime. For a few, it will be a trip they wish they'd never taken.

Anne Smith was one of those people. The 42-year-old single mother splurged and took her two daughters on a Caribbean cruise.
"We rarely get to go places as a family, so of course an opportunity to get away from the world and be with your girls is a really big deal," said Smith. "It went great at first and you know we had fun, got to see the beaches, we went horseback riding even."

But near the end of the cruise her 16-year-old daughter Abby came to her confused and in tears.

"I think I got molested," Abby told her mother.

The teen says she was sexually assaulted by a trainer in the gym on board the Carnival cruise ship.

"It was my final consultation to see how I had improved and so he took my measurements and he was like lifting my shirt and all that and pulling down my shorts," she said.

"I realized he shouldn't have been doing that, when he extremely touched me in places where he shouldn't have been touching me."