“One passenger, Saja, shared a TikTok Video at the moment she and other passengers confronted an MSC Group employee for hiding in a women’s toilet near the Kid’s Club and recording them:
Saja alerted a maid, who knocked on the door of the stall the man was in and tried to lure him out. But the man said nothing. It wasn’t until a brave passenger stood up and said, ‘Okay, why don’t we do this?’ and knocked loudly, mimicking housekeeping, that the man opened the door.
“I was wrong,” said the man. He wore an MSC staff uniform.
‘You have to call security because he’s an employee,'” the woman said to the housekeeper.
“I did not know it; I just saw a camera pointing at me,” Saja explained.”
The passenger later explained that the crew member (who wore his name tag) had been reported to ship security and was eventually “deported”.
After watching this video, here are some observations worth considering:
Sexual voyeurism occurs on cruise ships as well as in other public accommodation (hotels, baths, etc.). 18 U.S. Code §1801 (“Video Voyeurism”) states that it is a crime “to intend to take an image of a private area of a person without their consent . . .” (and the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy).
A few years ago, a couple and their 10-year-old child went on a three-day cruise on the Carnival Fantasy out of the cell phone. On the last night of the cruise, they discovered, to their shock and horror, a small video camera hidden in the bundled cables behind the television in their cabin, facing their bed. When they reported the presence of the recording device to ship security, Carnival downplayed the incident after they disassembled the device and did not notify the FBI or state law enforcement agencies in a timely manner.
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Photo credit: Only on TicTok
March 3, 2023 update:
crew center reported that the incident occurred on the MSC miracle Cruise ship.
The New York Post was one of several newspapers to cover this story. The TicTok video has reportedly been viewed over ten million times to date.