In 2014, a Disney Cruise Line steward, 36-year-old Ahmed Sofyan, was charged with two counts of molestation and one count of false imprisonment after holding a 13-year-old girl in an unoccupied cabin and molesting her. When this story was released, an ex-Disney Cruise officer spoke out, reporting a similar instance of child molestation that Disney authorities ordered her not to report just two years prior.
Dawn Taplin, the first female security officer at Disney and second in the entire cruise line industry, was on the cruise ship where this occurred. In 2014, she revealed Disney’s previous molestation cover-up.
In 2012, a Disney cruise ship employee was caught on camera molesting an 11-year-old girl in an elevator. Disney authorities allegedly did not allow security to report the incident.
Taplin interviewed the young victim after she and her grandmother reported the crime to Guest Services. The security officer, who had 17-years of experience as a police officer, found the surveillance footage extremely troubling.
The molestation occurred while the cruise ship was still docked at Port Canaveral in Florida while passengers were still boarding. Taplin recalls that they “weren’t going anywhere for another two hours or so.” Since they were still on U.S. land, Taplin notified the ship’s second-in-command and offered to call her FBI contact. However, she did not get the response she anticipated.
“I was ordered not to make any phone calls, do anything at all. Nothing. Period” recalled Taplin. She said that she was told, “Just keep your mouth shut.”
“If a crime is committed while you’re hooked up anywhere here, it is an American, it is a United States, it is a Florida crime,” said Taplin.
The ship then departed that afternoon with the suspected perpetrator, Milton Braganza, still on board, leaving other children at risk of falling victim to the same employee. Disney had put its reputation ahead of the children’s safety.
After the cruise ship had left U.S. waters the following day, the Disney Cruise Line finally notified the Port Canaveral police and the U.S. Coast Guard. However, the case was passed on to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
