Third Disney Cruise Worker Arrested on Child Porn Charges

In recent months, a string of Disney Cruise workers have allegedly been found with caches of child porn on their devices while their ships were docked in South Florida.

Following the arrest of two Disney Cruise crew members in a two-week span on child pornography charges in January, a third worker for the family cruise line was arrested this week for allegedly possessing lewd images of children. All of the workers were nabbed at Port Everglades, a Fort Lauderdale hub that is one of the busiest cruise ports in the nation.

Tirso Neri, a 44-year-old crew member on the Disney Dream ship, is the latest worker to be charged.

Following the ship's arrival at Port Everglades on December 18, 2023, federal agents searched two cellphones belonging to Neri and discovered "numerous sexually explicit photographs and videos of young children," according to court documents. Law enforcement found two folders on his Samsung phone that contained sexually explicit photos and video of a young Asian girl.

During his interview with law enforcement, Neri allegedly told investigators he belongs to several group chats on Telegram and Facebook, where he downloads and buys links for adult pornography. When officers asked about a folder that had sexually explicit images of a 17-year-old girl, Neri allegedly said he must have saved the folder from one of the group chats without looking at its contents and had not deleted the folder.

"Neri stated that he sometimes obtains folders in the chat groups and saves them to his phone without looking at them and then deletes them after," the charging document states.

A subsequent review of the Filipino citizen's other phone revealed videos of children as young as 9 years old engaging in sexual acts, the court documents say.

Neri was booked into the Broward Sheriff's Office Main Jail on April 15 on a charge of transportation and possession of child pornography. He is currently under a U.S. Marshals hold.

Series of Child Porn Arrests

The two prior Disney Cruise worker arrests came in close succession in January. Both of the men had been on federal agents' radar after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that they had downloaded obscene child images.

Amiel Joseph Trazo, a 28-year-old Filipino Disney Dream ship worker, was arrested on child porn charges after investigators said they found material depicting child sexual abuse on his devices when the ship arrived at Port Everglades on January 17. Detectives had received nine tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about Trazo.

Court documents state that videos and photos from the man's iPhone 15 Pro Max included graphic scenes involving children between the ages of 6 and 14. He was also a member of a group chat and Facebook messenger chats, where he would receive links and sexually explicit images of underage children, according to a federal affidavit.

"[Trazo] stated that he shared these images on Facebook Messenger with his friends and a girlfriend in order to 'tease' them," the criminal affidavit states. "The defendant also admitted that he 'needs help, knows it's wrong, and it is bad for his religion.'"

Trazo was booked into the Paul Rein Detention Facility in Pompano Beach, where he remains jailed under an immigration hold and U.S. Marshals hold. His arrest came to light when New Times obtained a February federal charging document filed against him.

In a search of a Disney Cruise ship docked at Port Everglades several days later, investigators discovered child porn on another crew member's Sandisk Micro SD memory card, according to an arrest report. Alvin Gonzales was arrested on January 31 and charged with one count of child porn possession. His arrest paperwork alleges Gonzalez had a video depicting two children engaging in a sexual act.

Investigators had received tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding the 49-year-old, who is also from the Philippines.

News reports did not mention which ship Gonzales worked on. However, Disney Dream and Disney Magic were the only ships with voyages in and out of Port Everglades listed at the time.

Online court records indicate the Broward State Attorney's Office filed "no information" on the case, meaning prosecutors did not pursue the charge. His public defender obtained an order for his release in March.

Unlike the other defendants' cases, the illegal material found on Gonzales' device was purportedly limited to a single file, which the state attorney's office did not find sufficient to sustain the charge. Gonzalez had told investigators he received the file eight to ten years ago and had no interest in child pornography.

Cruise Industry Under Scrutiny

Cruise lines have long been plagued by incidents of sexual misconduct and assault, many of which involved young children, leading some to question whether the companies adequately screen crew members.

Last December, a camp counselor from the Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Silhouette allegedly admitted to molesting multiple children while working in the Camp at Sea program aboard the ship. The feds say he confessed after a 6-year-old girl and her family reported that he groped her in the ship's youth center in November.

New data shows sexual assaults reported on cruise ships rose sharply in 2023.

A report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) indicates that 131 alleged incidents of sexual assault and rape were reported on cruise ships last year – surpassing the 2022 total of 87 and the pre-pandemic totals of 101 in 2019 and 82 in 2018.

Cruise Lines International Association, a cruise industry trade group, maintains that sex crimes are no more common aboard cruise ships than they are on the mainland U.S. Following the release of the new data, the group told New Times that "capacity increases with new ships and a greater volume of passengers" should be taken into account.