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Overboard DRUNK 15 y.o. dies off cruise ship... Parents blame cruise line

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Overboard DRUNK 15 y.o. dies off cruise ship... Parents blame cruise line

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Old Apr 14, 2006, 9:33 pm
  #16  
 
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Personally, I think they're all to blame.

1: The cruise staff for selling liquor to a minor.

2: The parents for not being responsible, by letting her go away to buy and consume too much.

3: The girl for acting like the 15 year old she is and letting herself get drunk when she knows you have to be at a legal age to buy and consume it.

(Not necessarily in that order)

The parents can blame the cruise line all they want, but it's obvious it's the girl's fault. She should have known better. I think the parents are blaming the cruise line in order to make a quick buck, especially when they should have been keeping an eye on her. Yes, we know they can't keep an eye on their children 24/7. In the article, it says they "didn't realize how much she had consumed." To me, this means they knew she was drinking but didn't take notice of how much. They should have made it one of their main priorities to be responsible and stop it from getting out of hand. All-in-all, the girl should have stopped herself instead of taking advantage of the fact she could buy alcohol illegally.

Last edited by Julieeee; Apr 14, 2006 at 9:39 pm
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Old Apr 14, 2006, 9:46 pm
  #17  
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Sorry, not buying it... the cut off to be an "adult" is 18, right? So under age 18, the parents are still responsible for EVERYTHING, including making sure the little brats are safe and out of harms way.... those Irish parents failed... miserably.

Over 18, then I'd say the girl would have been at fault... and I can just imagine what kind of role models those Irish parents were... and I'm guessing the legal age for drinking is probably around 16 in Ireland... and we're all supposed to act so SURPRISED that this happened... gee, i'm just SOOoooo shocked... SHOCKED that an unsupervised 15 year old girl gets drunk and tosses her cookies over the side of the ship, then falls in the water... HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED... HOW COULD THE CRUISE LINE HAVE ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN??? I imagine the parents probably didn't even realize the girl was missing until mid-day the following day, after them got out of their drunker stupers themselves...

I've been on lots of cruises... some of those cruise employees are close to savages themselves... not all, but SOME... Imagine, some parent allows their kids to run amuck alone on a big ship... Oh, if everyone could be as perfect as me...
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Old Apr 14, 2006, 9:58 pm
  #18  
 
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Even in cases where it is physically possible to keep watch on kids 24/7, what kind of people would they grow up to be? My reckoning is that they would either leave the nest as soon as they possibly could and resent their parents for the rest of their life, or grow up to be molly-coddled people, useless in the real world.

You may not legally be an adult until you're 18, but at 15 you should bloody well know better...how in the world did she even fall overboard?? It could very well be a suicide, unless the weather was horrendous (case in which I doubt she would've gone out)...
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Old Apr 14, 2006, 10:07 pm
  #19  
 
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I have several points.

1. The story just hit the news although the incident happened on January 5th.

2. If you would do a Google search (which most posters here apparently have not), there are different stories from different sources. The only version that I have seen on this thread is the parent's side of it. Perhaps not is all as it appears????

3. I would be interested to see the receipts for the entire cruise. Here is my reasoning. The incident happened on the third day of the cruise. Was Lynsey behaving and not being served drinks on the ship until the period just before she went overboard or was she being served prior to the period in question? If she had been being served, did her parents know about it? Perhaps her father had informally "authorized" the drinking on board. I have seen this happen. That would not excuse the bar staff but it would shed a different light on the parents' contribution to the incident. Also, the parents could have checked their current bill on their cabin TV set. Were they checking periodically to see what their kids were charging or not?

4. The family has quite a bit of money and are probably not suing for the money. They are offering 205,000 EURO reward for anyone who finds the body.

5. I am not a lawyer, but I wonder if the fact that Lynsey was returned safely to her parents care after she became drunk but before she went overboard means much. From the ships viewpoint, wasn't their liability limited when her parents took her back into their custody? Why didn't they keep a better watch on her and take better care of her?

6. One of the stories said that she might have had an argument with her boyfriend and did not fall off of the ship but jumped. If this is true, did she argue before or after her parents took custody of her?


I don't think that anyone can answer these questions, but without answering some or all of them, I think that there are too many unknowns to have an informed opinion of who is to blame.

JMO
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Old Apr 14, 2006, 10:45 pm
  #20  
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I too am inclined, at first read, to blame both sides.

Cruise lines do have a track record of "wanting it both ways," especially when it comes to employee training and pay. They want to serve ports of call in the affluent countries but not have to adhere to their labor laws. Ship's registry? Probably Panama or Liberia. And of course they're going to try to get people to sign away everything in a contract as a condition for going. They'd rather do that than be subject to laws. Take away any possibility of punitive damages and you can factor in liability as a cost of doing business to the point where you could deliberately cut corners if the savings exceeds the human "collateral damage" from the policy.

It seems conservatives think responsibility applies only to individuals and can be bargained away or reduced to negligible levels for corporations. That's a glaring double-standard.

OTOH, individuals can also go too far in some cases, and no system can protect from everything. In this case the recklessness may have been more on the part of the individual. But I don't think you can put it all on the parents.

Could well be the plaintiffs try to focus on training levels and turnover in this one, trying to make an "accident waiting to happen" sort of argument.
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Old Apr 14, 2006, 10:51 pm
  #21  
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All very good questions, which will surely come out in the trial or trials... But most of them will probably never be answered completely. The one and ONLY fact that we know was that the kid was UNSUPERVISED, and that those parents, whether wealthy or not, WERE NOT WATCHING THE KID.

The parent's attorney is all over the news, doing interviews telling everyone what a wonderful kid Lyndsey was... "star soccer player", etc... Doesn't matter... I don't care if she was working on a cure for cancer in her spare time... it doesn't change the FACT, and it's the ONLY FACT we know so far, is that the kid has ROTTEN PARENTS...

and I think it IS possible to watch your kids 24/7... they may not come out perfect in the end, but they will probably be alive. I trust we all agree it's a sad story, and there's probably much more to the REAL story than any of us will ever know... but the bottom line for me and the moral of the whole story is that some people simply shouldn't be parents.
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Old Apr 14, 2006, 11:16 pm
  #22  
 
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Originally Posted by flyrights
... it doesn't change the FACT, and it's the ONLY FACT we know so far, is that the kid has ROTTEN PARENTS...
Even though the parents didn't take much responsibility by looking after their daughter on a cruise, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're rotten parents. Who knows? Maybe they were the best parents a girl could have (when they're not on a cruise.) C'mon! You must admit that when on a cruise, the only thing to do is to have fun and have a few drinks - as adults, therefore they can't keep a close eye on their kids. But, like I said, they still should have been more responsible towards her and watched what she was doing while enjoying themselves.
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Old Apr 14, 2006, 11:35 pm
  #23  
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dialog from a play i'm writing about Lyndsey:

Here's the dialog of a possible conversation the parents had in their cabin:

[deleted by the moderator]

Last edited by richard; Apr 17, 2006 at 5:35 am Reason: offensive material
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Old Apr 15, 2006, 12:06 am
  #24  
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Even the children of responsible and "good" parents cage drinks on the side.
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Old Apr 15, 2006, 2:24 am
  #25  
 
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Xenophobic?

Flyrights - why are you all of a sudden trawling through these forums making thinly disguised xenophobic comments about people

Australians, Chinese, Israilis, Germans and now Irish

You seem happy and keen to make racial stereotypes. In fact on another post that is what you say you are going to do.

Your comments re possible conversations the parents may have had are IMO disgusting.
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Old Apr 15, 2006, 2:41 am
  #26  
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Sorry you weren't amused. You should see my latest contribution to the thread about the worst tourist behavior... you'll really hate me... but I'd like to think I post what I really think... admittedly, sometimes it isn't pretty... but neither is poor parenting, and blaming others.

And i admit i don't know ALL of the facts of the 15 year old drowing matter, but I think i know enough to know that the parents aren't angels.
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Old Apr 15, 2006, 2:52 am
  #27  
 
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Originally Posted by flyrights
Sorry you weren't amused. You should see my latest contribution to the thread about the worst tourist behavior... you'll really hate me... but I'd like to think I post what I really think... admittedly, sometimes it isn't pretty... but neither is poor parenting, and blaming others.

And i admit i don't know ALL of the facts of the 15 year old drowing matter, but I think i know enough to know that the parents aren't angels.

There's nothing big and clever about making xenophobic remarks even if it was you think

If you take your view of the world on the basis of what FOX news then good luck then more fool you!

You're not a parent, You weren't on the boat, you haven't seen the full case papers, you don't know the family, you don't know any of the circumstances of the child falling overboard, in fact you are only foing on what FOX news has chosen to tell you.

Face it your a troll looking for a fight
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Old Apr 15, 2006, 3:09 am
  #28  
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Yeah, all I get is FOX news... i don't believe a word of what they say, except on these salatious murder/death mystery cases that i can't help but getting sucked into... i'm not really sure what a "troll" means, and if i were looking for a fight, i think i'd be more obvious... unless that is a characteristic of a "troll"...

sorry we can't all be like you. if it makes you happy, i'll try to be more dishonest, and just say happy things that you want to hear, rather than the cold hard truth.

the topic was about cruise ship safety/parenting... sorry you didn't agree with the conclusion I jumped to, admittedly just based on FOX news... i do get BBC t.v. too, but that is news that is almost 100% about the middle east... and i just don't care that much about it...

right now where i am, there is a fierce FIERCE thunder and lightning storm going on...
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Old Apr 15, 2006, 3:33 am
  #29  
 
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And that means keeping your kids IN PHYSICAL sight, 24 hours a day if necessary... especially when they are 13 to 18.
I'd be interested to know how many teenagers you are a parent to.

As for the rest of your remarks - well, I'm not even sure they deserve the response they are getting.
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Old Apr 15, 2006, 3:46 am
  #30  
 
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Bad Taste

I want to take issue with the original poster, who seems very keen to offer opinions about someone else's tragedy. No matter how careful a parent is a child can't be supervised 100% of the time. And if a company is willing to take money from a minor for alcohol, they should be tackled.

Couple of things I'd like to suggest you consider...

*The parents involved in this case are friends of my family. They are devastated by the death of their daughter. Offer an opinion if you feel you really must, but ending with a "Puh-lees" trivialises what they're going through, and is in exceptionally poor taste.

*If you feel compelled to share opinions with the world at large about issues of current affairs, I'd respectfully suggest you look a little further than Fox News for your research.

As a general rule, maybe people offer opinions in areas they've expertise, and think twice about the usefulness of wittering on about other subjects.
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