Cruise ship youth counselor faces molestation charge. He says it wasn’t his first offense
A 35-year-old cruise ship youth counselor is in a Broward County jail charged with abusive sexual conduct of a minor under 12. The FBI says he inappropriately touched a 6-year-old girl while she was playing a video game in the youth center aboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Celebrity Silhouette when she was on a cruise with her parents in November.
The FBI said the counselor admitted, while in custody three days after the alleged incident, to touching at least three other minor children in their vaginal areas while they were on board the ship.
Cruise line statement
In a statement released to the Miami Herald on Friday, Celebrity Cruises said, “We have zero tolerance for this behavior. We reported this to law enforcement and terminated the crew member, and we will continue to fully cooperate with authorities.”
What the arrest affidavit says
According to an affidavit filed with the Southern District of Florida, Cris John Pentinio Castor was a crew member working as a youth counselor on the Celebrity Silhouette’s Camp at Sea Youth Center that had departed from Fort Lauderdale’s Port Everglades on Nov. 20, for a 10-day cruise. Castor, a citizen of the Philippines, had started in that position a few months earlier in August.
The child’s father filed a complaint with the Youth Center’s manager after he and the girl’s mother picked up their daughter from the center, where she had been playing video games on Nov. 27.
According to FBI Special Agent M. Alexandra Montilla’s affidavit, the girl told her parents she had been touched by “CJ” on her “private parts.”
Her parents, Montilla said, returned with her to the center to speak with the program manager. There, the girl told the manager what she had told her parents and “pointed towards her vaginal area,” according to the FBI’s report.
After the ship’s arrival in Port Everglades on Nov. 30, the girl told a forensic investigator that Castor had touched her beneath her clothing, in the area “where the pee comes from.”
What security footage showed
Security footage helps confirm the girl’s account, according to prosecutors.
“Security footage from the Youth Center captured the incident from behind and portrays minor victim and Castor sitting next to each other. Though the footage does not capture the contact directly, the footage is consistent with minor victim’s statement and shows Castor’s hand reaching into the lap of minor victim, in the vicinity of her vaginal area, while she played a video game on November 27, 2023,” the affidavit reads.
After Castor was arrested he told law enforcement officers on a recorded statement that he knowingly touched the child and “also admitted to the inappropriate sexual touching of other minor children that were in his care at the Youth Center, on multiple occasions, while consciously hiding his acts from the Youth Center’s security cameras,” according to Montilla’s report with the Southern District.
What federal law says
Title 18, United States Code, Section 2244 “makes it a federal crime for anyone, within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States of America, to knowingly engage or attempt to engage in sexual contact with a person who has not attained 12 years of age.
Castor remains in custody of the Paul Rein Detention Facility in Pompano Beach with no bond on a U.S. Marshalls and immigration hold, pending trial, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
The Celebrity Silhouette is registered in Malta and was traveling in the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, according to the FBI report. The ship visited locales including St. Maarten, St. Lucia, Tobago, Grenada and Antigua.
Earlier this year, a major with the Virginia sheriff’s office was convicted in November by a Miami federal jury of abusive sexual contact of a minor, a 9-year-old female relative, while on a Carnival cruise that had departed from PortMiami in May.
