A cruise ship worker has confessed to raping a passenger and trying to throw her overboard on Valentine's Day, claiming the assault was revenge for an alleged slight.
The victim told FBI agents that her attacker appeared with no warning inside her darkened stateroom in the middle of the night, and raped, beat, punched and strangled her before he tried to throw her off a balcony into the ocean off the coast of Honduras.
The worker, Ketut Pujayasa, 28, was quickly detained on the MS Nieuw Amsterdam and arrested by the FBI when the ship returned to Florida on Sunday.
The 31-year-old woman, who is from the US but was identified only by her initials in court records, says she lost consciousness at least once during the assault and firmly believed her attacker was trying to kill her.
Pujayasa, an Indonesian citizen who worked as a room service attendant, claims he was punishing the woman because he believed she had insulted him and his family, the FBI agents who interviewed him wrote in their report.
Pujayasa, who worked for Holland America Line, says he delivered breakfast the woman had ordered to her stateroom on Thursday.
He said he knocked three times before the passenger acknowledged him and he claimed he heard a woman's voice saying, "Wait a minute, son of a bitch!"
Pujayasa told FBI agents he found the comment offensive to "himself and his parents".
That evening, Pujayasa went back to the stateroom and knocked on the door, but there was no answer.
"(He) stated that he then walked to the Lido deck on Deck 9 in an attempt to locate the passenger from the stateroom who insulted him in order to punch her in the face for insulting him that morning. However, as he approached Deck 9, he realised it was too crowded and decided to leave," agents said.
Instead, he returned to the woman's stateroom and used his company-issued master key to get into the woman's room even though he was off duty, authorities said.
He told agents that he hid on the balcony and fell asleep on a chair there.
When the woman returned, he went inside her room and immediately began choking her and punching her.
He says he struck her with several items, including a laptop computer and a curling iron, and that he used a phone cord and curling iron cord to try to silence her screams and yells for help.
Unable to silence the victim, Pujayasa told investigators he tried to conceal his involvement by trying to throw her overboard.
He was arrested later on charges of attempted murder and aggravated sexual abuse.
Pujayasa is scheduled for a bond hearing next week in federal court in Fort Lauderdale but is unlikely to qualify for bond because of the seriousness of the allegations and his lack of ties to the South Florida area.
