Captain’s Companion Speaks
Says she’s “not his lover”, wasn’t drinking with him.

Reuters TV / Landov
The young Moldovan woman who supposedly fell into a lifeboat with the Costa Concordia’s captain wants the world to know there were no inappropriate interactions between her and Schettino prior to the cruise ship disaster. Domnica Cemortan, 25, told the Italian press on Friday that she’s “not the captain’s lover.” The reason we should believe her? According to Cemortan, Schettino often showed her pictures of his daughter when she was young. “A man who wants a lover doesn’t behave like that,” she said. Cemortan has worked as a dancer on cruise ships in the past and was reportedly seen drinking with the captain an hour before the Costa Concordia crashed. She insists this never occurred and that she was in fact having dinner with some of the ship’s officers, despite the fact that passenger photos appear to show her dining with Schettino. She does, however, admit that she was “close to Capt. Schettino” because she was translating the captain’s Italian orders to Russian passengers aboard the ship.
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