A Texas man who allegedly raped a woman on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas faced sexual battery charges and was taken into police custody when the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale over the weekend, officials say.
The alleged attack took place on Aug. 28 with a 20-year-old woman stating to police that she was raped mid-cruise by the man.
The man, 28, was granted a $20,000 bond.
Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas continues to make headlines months after its inaugural sail and people are still talking about the enormity of it.
Though the ship has been sailing since the beginning of the year, a recent video featuring its arrival in Port Miami has gained traction online with many users asking “how does this thing manage to float?”
The answer can be found in most grade school science classrooms – buoyancy. When a massive ship such as the Icon of the Seas is hulking past seemingly without effort, it is because it is pushing aside water, displacing enough to equal its weight. Structural designs such as a U-shaped hull help the ship carve through the waves and displace water. The hull’s round edges reduce potential drag and keep the ship from rolling. When building the immense ‘floating cities’ we know as cruises today, engineers must take weight distribution into account. Ships that are bottom-heavy will sink while the opposite would cause the ship to be destabilized, increasing the probability it would topple over.
A woman sues SeaWorld after being injured at its Aquatica water park on a slide last year when another patron “violently colliding” with her.
The woman was visiting SeaWorld’s Aquatica in Orlando when she said she went on a slide that had no lifeguard stationed outside of it to monitor when patrons had safely gone down the slide and give permission for the next person to go. Before the woman got off her water slide, another adult guest got on and “violently colliding” with her, causing her permanent injury, her attorneys said in the lawsuit.
This story is, unfortunately, not unique. A 7-year-old at Jungle Island in Miami visiting the park with his summer camp was luckily saved by a lifeguard who saw the child, not wearing a life vest, struggling in the water. The lifeguard performed CPR on the child who had to be taken to the hospital where he went into cardiac arrest but, thankfully, came out of the ordeal safely, according to previous reporting of the incident.
Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog