Cruise Ship Law

Eight years after her 22-year-old son disappeared while vacationing aboard a Carnival Cruise Lines ship, Jean Scavone's hopes rise each time her phone rings.

"I'm waiting for Jimmy to say, 'Mom, it's me. I'm here,' " said the 58-year-old Connecticut resident. "I know my son is probably dead, but in my heart and soul I can't believe it because there is nothing that tells me he's gone. He didn't die; he vanished."

Saying Carnival gave her more grief than comfort, Scavone helped form a victims group last year that has been calling for changes in the cruise industry.

Today in Atlanta some of the group's members and cruise industry employees plan to work together with the hope that future victims will find the support that Scavone said she did not have.

Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises are co-sponsoring the Sixth Annual Family Assistance Foundation Symposium, an event founded largely to help survivors of airline disasters.

"I hope it's not a public relations move," said Kendall Carver, the president of International Cruise Victims, the group made up mostly of people who have suffered cruise ship tragedies.

Carver, whose daughter went missing while on a 2004 cruise, and other members of the group will be the first cruise ship victims to speak at the annual event that brings together survivors and responders of tragic events. The symposium's organizer said bringing the victims and cruise industry employees together is a crucial part of helping future victims.

Joint appearances before three congressional subcommittee hearings, including one last month, have been tense. While the victim's group members say new laws are urgently needed, cruise officials maintain the industry has an enviable safety record.

How safe the estimated 10.6 million annual cruise vacationers that leave from U.S. ports is difficult to verify. No government agency publicly tracks crime or overboard incidents that occur on cruise ships, and the industry considers crime statistics "proprietary business information."

Legislation was presented last year that would have required more stringent crime-reporting standards for cruise lines. Another version could be proposed in Congress again this year.

Carolyn Coarsey, co-founder and president of the Atlanta-based nonprofit group hosting the Atlanta symposium, said she has trained some 2,000 cruise ship employees in the past year on how to handle tragic events. Within the last three months, Royal Caribbean International and its subsidiary Celebrity Cruises have joined the organization. Carnival, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line are in the process of joining.

"They want to know how to do better, and they're realizing the need," said Coarsey, whose foundation formed after a 1996 law required airlines to do more for survivors.

Lynn White, a vice president with Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, said her company started a three-person guest care team a year ago and Coarsey's group was instrumental in training that department.

Carver, the victim's group leader, said it is good that the cruise industry is working to treat people more compassionately, but legislation will be key to a long-term solution.

Still, Carver and other victims said they also felt compelled to meet with the cruise company employees this week.

"I can't stand up on a soap box and scream that I'm a victim and not take part in the process to make things better," said Virginia resident Kimberly Dean Edwards, 42, who is still engaged in a civil suit with Royal Caribbean after she said she was forcibly fondled in a woman's restroom aboard Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Sea in October 2004.

Carver, Edwards and others have agreed to participate in training videos that will be shown to cruise company employees.

"I hope by hearing my story, they will be touched in a way that they will say, 'This stops now. We will not re-victimize another person,' " Edwards said.

By M.C. MOEWE, Staff Writer
Daytona Beach News Journal Online