Ketut Pujayasa, an Indonesian citizen accused of beating, raping, and trying to throw a female passenger off a nudist cruise ship last Valentine's Day, has pleaded guilty before a federal judge.
There was no plea bargain offered to the 29-year-old Pujayasa, who claimed he assaulted the woman because she insulted his mother.
On Monday, Pujayasa, who worked for Holland America cruise lines, changed his plea to guilty of attempted murder and aggravated sexual assault.
The MS Nieuw Amsterdam had departed from Port Everglades and was sailing off the coast of Roatan, Honduras, when the attack happened.
Police say Pujayasa entered her stateroom in the middle of the night without warning and viciously attacked the woman.
According to authorities, Pujayasa beat the woman, whose name has been withheld, with a laptop and a curling iron, then used a phone cord to try to silence her screams as she cried for help.
The victim fought off Pujayasa by trying to stab him in the genitals with a corkscrew.
Pujayasa punched and beat the woman, raped her, and then tried strangling her. The victim says she blacked out a couple of times during the incident but told police she was sure her attacker was trying to kill her.
She says after beating and raping her, Pujayasa tried to throw her overboard from her stateroom balcony.
Pujayasa confessed to the attack, police said at the time, according to the Sun Sentinel.
According to FBI investigators, Pujayasa told authorities he had attacked the woman because, he claims, she had insulted him and his mother.
Pujayasa told investigators he had delivered breakfast to the woman. He knocked several times before the woman answered back, "Wait a minute, you son of a bitch."
He told the FBI that he took the woman's insult as an offense to himself and his mother.
Pujayasa says he tried to locate the woman later in the day to punch her in the face. He spotted her on the deck of the ship, but there were too many people for him to go and attack her, he told authorities.
So later that evening, he went back to the woman's stateroom and entered it using his master key. Pujayasa went out on the balcony to wait for the woman but fell asleep on a deck chair. When he heard her arrive back to the room, he attacked her.
The attack stopped when another passenger came by and banged on the door. The passenger was able to administer first aid to the victim, who was eventually hospitalized once the ship returned to Fort Lauderdale.
Pujayasa was detained and arrested by the FBI once when the ship returned to port and was detained at the Broward Main Jail.
The Sun Sentinel reports that the victim will attend the sentence hearing. It's unclear what the length of Pujayasa's sentence might be.
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