Former Royal Caribbean Crew Member Pleads Guilty to Sex Assault
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake scheduled sentencing for Sept. 18; Herrera faces up to 20 years in federal prison and remains in custody.
A former Royal Caribbean International crew member pleaded guilty June 22 in Houston federal court to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old passenger aboard Rhapsody of the Seas during a July 2003 cruise from Galveston. Elias Luis Herrera, 47, a Honduran national who had worked in the ship’s galley, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, who scheduled sentencing for Sept. 18.
The case had been pending since a 2004 federal indictment named Herrera and another crew member, Edgerton Phillip Medford, in the assault.
Assault described in court filings
The ship departed Galveston on July 14, 2003, for a seven-day sailing. The factual basis in Herrera’s plea agreement states that he and Medford were working in the galley section on deck nine and encountered the passenger, identified only as K.L. because she was a minor, near the pool between about 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on July 17.
The plea agreement states the two men grabbed the girl by the arms, forced her onto a deck chair and held her down while assaulting her. The document also states that both crew members knew she was intoxicated and unable to decline participation; ship medical personnel measured her blood-alcohol concentration at 0.15 percent several hours later.
After the passenger reported the assault onboard, a ship physician examined her and collected physical evidence. When the vessel returned to Galveston, an FBI agent boarded the ship, interviewed the passenger and both crew members, and obtained DNA swabs from the men. The evidence later implicated both Herrera and Medford.
Neither man was arrested when the ship returned to Texas, and both continued aboard. Herrera left Rhapsody of the Seas on July 30, 2003, while the ship was docked in Cozumel, Mexico. Medford later received compassionate leave to return to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and did not return to the vessel.
Extradition and maritime-crime framework
Medford was extradited from St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2007. Herrera later traveled to Costa Rica, where he was arrested in 2014 for trafficking more than 737 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Costa Rica and received a 12-year prison sentence in 2016. He was extradited to the Southern District of Texas in October 2025 in the cruise-ship assault case.
Federal maritime jurisdiction can apply to serious crimes on commercial passenger vessels that depart from or arrive at U.S. ports when U.S. citizens are victims or perpetrators, including aboard foreign-flagged ships in international waters. Under the CVSSA, cruise operators must report eight specified serious crimes and missing persons to the FBI within four hours of an allegation; local authorities generally have primary jurisdiction in port or within 12 nautical miles, while flag-state authority applies on the high seas with potential FBI involvement in U.S.-citizen cases.
A 2013 U.S. congressional hearing determined that minors accounted for approximately one-third of sexual-assault victims on cruise ships. Herrera faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $250,000, and he remains in federal custody pending sentencing.
