By Brenna Wiegand
Eric Rappe’ of Silverton will appear on 20/20 in January, the result of an effort borne out of grief and anger at his older brother’s disappearance overboard “under suspicious circumstances” in 2012 while on a Thanksgiving Day pleasure cruise.
His brother was last seen alive on Nov. 29, 2012 on Holland America’s Eurodam cruise. The ship was between St. Thomas and the Bahamas, according to a news story by Team 6 invesigators in South Florida on May 2, 2013.
“Jacob went out on deck to have a cigarette and never came back,” Rappe’ said. “They said he committed suicide, which we knew was a crock … and the video is a crock.”
Within two months of Jacob’s disappearance, Eric was a board member of the International Cruise Victims Association (ICV).
He was astounded to discover that someone vanishes from a cruise ship once every two weeks.
“More sexual crimes per capita take place on a cruise ship than anywhere else in the world,” Rappe’ said, “and 34 percent of those crimes are against children and nobody knows it; they’re so good at hiding all of this.”
On Nov. 17, 2013, Rappe’ and 11 others flew to Washington D.C. on their own resources to lobby representatives of the U.S. Congress for cruise victims’ rights.
They attended more than 50 meetings to explain legislation put forward in the U.S. Senate by Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV) and U.S. House Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Doris Matsui (D-CA) that would build on the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act signed into law by President Obama in 2010. Before this, said Rappe’, no such laws have been passed since the Titanic.
Weeks later, ABC network’s 20/20 flew Rappe’ to New York for an interview that will be part of an episode on the cruise industry that should air in January.
It’s gut-wrenching to tell his story over and over, said Rappe’, and scary taking on a multi-billion dollar industry that has already spent about $21 million fighting the effort.
However, as ICV founder Kendall Carver put it, “Money doesn’t change the truth, and that truth is ICV’s currency.”
On a blog post in September 2013, Rappe’ wrote, “As a member of International Cruise Victims (ICV) it is my duty to inform the world of the devastating consequences to the negligence of the cruise industry. By informing the world we hope to enact change that could save tens of thousands of future victims.”
