A cruise passenger is suing MSC, saying she was sexually assaulted by a crew member

• A passenger is suing MSC Cruises, claiming a crew member sexually assaulted her on February 9.
• The passenger said she was taken to a staff-only room by a bartender who forced himself on her.

A cruise passenger is suing MSC Cruises, saying she was sexually assaulted by a crew member while aboard the ship, the MSC Meraviglia.

According to the lawsuit, filed on February 24, MSC Cruises "failed to provide a reasonably safe environment" for its passengers and failed to protect them from sexual assault.

The plaintiff, a 29-year-old woman from Saratoga Springs, Utah, was on a weeklong cruise that departed from Port Canaveral, Florida, on February 5.

The lawsuit says that an MSC bartender had served the woman, her husband, and four friends drinks on the evening of February 9.

The woman, who is not named in the suit, and a friend asked the bartender for a last drink at around 2:30 a.m., as the bar was closing. The suit says he agreed and "motioned" for her to meet him on the other side of the bar and took her to a staff-only room.

According to the lawsuit, the woman followed him into the room, where the bartender began "aggressively kissing her" and "forced his penis into her mouth." The woman's husband and a friend searched for her and found her in the staff-only room "shocked and scared."

The lawsuit says the woman's husband confronted the crew member, whom the husband said apologized before security was alerted. The lawsuit says the woman then had a rape kit done at the medical center on the ship.

After reporting the incident, other crew members refused to take any action against the bartender, according to the claim.

"MSC failed to keep my client safe. They didn't supervise the employee to ensure customers weren't overserved alcohol. They did not train employees to protect intoxicated passengers. And they simply did not patrol areas and monitor cameras to prevent my client from being forced into a 'staff-only' area she shouldn't have had access to," Jack Hickey, the woman's attorney, told Insider.

MSC Cruises had fired another crew member weeks earlier after a passenger and staff members caught him filming the passenger from a toilet cubicle.

The passenger shared a TikTok video on February 27 in which she and staff members confronted the man, which has garnered more than 10 million views. The employee can be heard saying he was "wrong" in the video.

MSC Cruises did not respond to Insider's request for comment.