When you’re vacationing on a cruise, you expect your time to be enjoyable and relaxing. The last you expect (or want to discover) is finding yourself being filmed by an employee of the cruise ship while in a restroom stall. Unfortunately, that’s what appears to have recently happened to a passenger on the MSC Meraviglia, a cruise ship owned and operated by MSC Cruises.
The passenger, known only as Saja, videotaped the interaction between her, other ship employees and other passengers when she asked for assistance after she discovered the creep. She shared it on TikTok on February 26th.
Saja captioned the disturbing clip with, “This man was in the women’s restroom located at the kids club. Please don’t leave your children unattended on any vacation & be aware of your surroundings at all times.“ She also had, throughout the video, “Cruise Employee filming women in restroom. 3rd reported incident that night.”
As the video starts, Saja and a male employee appear to be entering the ladies’ room. Saja can be seen motioning to a toilet cubicle as she tells a male housekeeping staff: “There’s someone hiding under there filming me.”
At first the housekeeping crew doesn’t appear to understand, so she repeats what she said, and added it’s a man. “A man?” the crew housekeeper asks, to which Saja replies, “Yes, it’s a man!”
The housekeeper hesitantly knocks on the door of the stall and says, “Housekeeping.” No answer. So he knocks and announces himself again. Still no answer. He steps back and looks under the door of the stall and sees 2 feet. He doesn’t say a word.
Meanwhile a female passenger who had also entered the ladies’ room runs up to cubicle door. “Housekeeping! Can you open up the door please? Open up the door!”
The door opens and a worried-looking young man comes out. He says, “I was wrong.”
“OK. You need to call security because he’s an employee,” the woman said.
Another woman who had entered the ladies’ room asked, “He was filing you?” “Yeah.” “Wow.”
Saja further explained, ” I just opened up the bathroom door right now. …I just saw a camera pointing at me.”
The video ends with the second woman suggesting to get the guy’s name.
Here’s the full video:
@sajac4 This man was in the women’s restroom located at the kids club. Please don’t leave your children unattended on any vacation & be aware of your surroundings at all times. #cruise #cruiseshipcrew
As of this writing, the video has gotten 13.4 million views and 17.5 thousand comments.
Most comments were in support for Saja. Many comments were from women who mentioned safety concerns, similar situations that had happened to them, etc. Of course, several people focused on suing the cruise ship. And there were a handful who try to put a “trans/drag/he identified as a woman” spin on it, because of course they did #rolleyes. But most people, including men who commented, were very, VERY supportive.
In some of her replies, Saja mentioned a few more details:
- “My husband asked to see his phone after the incident and he said nothing is in his phone. He was deleting things when we passed by him later on….They took his phone after he deleted everything. So by the time security got to it, he had the phone wiped.”
- “He was held in a room on the ship with security. Which I assume would be a cell. I don’t really know as security was very cautious with giving me info.”
- “This man was highly intoxicated and on a children’s floor while he was supposed to be working. It’s sick.”
- ” I can’t imagine how many kids he filmed during his shift”
- (Someone said in a reply) “He was def on his knees or pants down. You can see something black move under the door but when he comes out he has on white shoes and black shorts.” Saja: “You’re right, I pointed that out to security when I showed them this video as well.”
- Of the woman who knocked on the door after the male staff member did: “She was the hero of that night for sure. She took me to security and demanded we see the supervisor immediately.”
- “I did [press charges] as soon as we docked. The authorities will call me once he has been arrested.”
Two days later, Saja posted a follow up. She captioned it with, “Please keep in mind that this issue IS NOT unique to MSC. Also, to answer your questions, No I have not been compensated in any way shape or form, or had contact with the cruise line. Nor am I interested. Just wanted to spread awareness. Us women have to stick together. ❤️”
In this second video, Saja wrote:
UPDATE: I have been contacted by authorities and have been informed that the gentleman in the video has been deported. My goal is NOT to disgrace a cruise line for the acts of 1 of their employees. We had a great experience besides this incident & the other crew members were some of the best staff I had the privilege of meeting. I decided to post this video to bring awareness on leaving your children alone in an setting especially while on vacation. I want all women to be aware of their surroundings at all times, vacations included. Stay vigilant & safe out there.”
MSC representative told news.com.au that its security team cooperated with authorities to investigate the incident. They added that the company had a “zero-tolerance policy for any misconduct” and took action to terminate the crew member’s employment.
I don’t know if anything else will happen with this story. I mean, Saja didn’t say if she plans to pursue litigation. But meanwhile, it’s just like she said, “I want all women to be aware of their surroundings at all times, vacations included. Stay vigilant & safe out there.”
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