Spencer Ehrenfeld

Yeah, unfortunately, it's very true, Nancy.

Both men and women are the victims of sexual assault.

are very reluctant to come forward for all the reasons you just spoke of.

The guilt, the shame, the stigma, and all my years of representing victims of sexual assault on cruise lines, both men and women, that many of them have been victimized before.

This is not the first time they have been the victim of sexual abuse.

So they have this compounded emotional paralysis.

that stops them from reporting it.

And Nancy, if they do,

The cruise lines, in my experience, are the least helpful to them in getting them the care they need and preserving the evidence of these types of assaults.

And the cruise lines are guilty of not reporting them because those reports have to be put on the Department of Transportation website that will list the number of sexual assaults that happen per cruise line per quarter.

And if they're not reported, the cruise lines don't have to report it.

And if they're not reported and not- Oh my stars.

A hundred percent, Nancy.

And it also is destruction of evidence because when he went to the hospital, I'm sure that he changed his clothes.

I don't know what happened to his clothes.

I'm sure he was cleaned and his fingers and what's under his nails and all sorts of things that would have been invaluable evidence to the investigators and prosecutors in this case were probably lost by that trip to the hospital.

It really...

interrupted the chain of custody of a lot of evidence that would have been left on him, including potentially bodily fluids and things that may have been on his hands or on his clothes.