‘Below Deck Down Under’ Shocker: Two Crew Members Fired, Producers Step In After Attempted Sexual Assault

Below Deck Down Under just aired two of the most gripping episodes of reality TV in 2023. From last week’s teaser, fans knew that trouble was on the horizon with bosun Luke Jones, but no one could have anticipated the chain of events or the despicable, inexcusable actions that would lead to Luke’s firing and, subsequently, the dismissal of second stew Laura Bileskalne.

It all started on a drunken night out after a successful third charter that gave the yachties their biggest tip of the season. Even before the outing, Luke had already established a pattern of bad behavior when it came to the women of the Northern Sun. He kissed stew Margot Sisson without her permission after the first charter, the first sign this guy was bad news. He hooked up with Laura after the second charter and later rejected her because he felt she was too clingy. But his prior behavior, however creepy, was nothing compared to the dangerous stunt he pulled in Episodes 6 and 7.

As the crew drank to excess and partied the night away, the well-oiled Luke dirty danced with an extremely inebriated Margot along with the rest of the yachties. He positioned himself next to her in the back of a van on the drive back to the ship. Chief Stew Aesha Scott noticed that Margot was passed out on Luke’s lap. “No gobbies for you,” Aesha told Luke protectively. “Later,” Luke said knowingly. Shocked, Aesha replied, “You should not be saying that when she’s like that. You should be putting her to bed.” “I agree with her,” Chef Tzarina Mace-Ralph chimed in to support Aesha. Once the van arrived at the boat, Aesha told deckhand Culver Bradbury: “I’m going to watch her as she goes. I’m just going to chaperone a bit.”

Aesha’s instincts proved to be 100% correct, unfortunately. “You should come and cuddle with me,” Luke told Margot. “No, let’s go,” said Margot, the first of many times she said no to him over the next crucial hours. From there, Aesha protectively led Margot back on the boat and to her own cabin. “I don’t want any drunkenness to be taken advantage of. So I’d just like to see you get into bed safely,” Aesha told Margot as she helped her get into bed. “Thank you,” Magot told Aesha as Luke suddenly came into the room in his whitey tighties. “Jesus Christ, you materialized out of nowhere,” Aesha said, shocked. As Luke tried unsuccessfully to get Margot in the jacuzzi and leave, Aesha told her, “I just saw the way that Luke was looking at you, and I’m feeling very protective.”

“I’m glad that you’re here and I don’t want to go into the jacuzzi. I want to go to bed. No Luke,” Margot confirmed to her chief stew. As Aesha got Margot settled in her bunk, she closed the door to her cabin and left. Suddenly, a power outage left the entire yacht in darkness. After getting out of the hot tub, Luke calculatedly headed to Margot’s cabin with only a towel on and climbed into bed with her. The production team immediately intervened and told Luke to get out of there. In a fourth wall break, a producer walked into the cabin, tapped Luke on the shoulder and said, “I gotta get you outta here because she wants to go to bed.” Luke refused to leave, asking Margot, “are you okay?” Still drunk, Margot mumbled, “yes, it’s sleepy time.” Not convinced, the producer continued to tap him on the shoulder and exited the room himself when Luke started to get up from Margot’s bed.

“Can you fuck off for a second,” Luke asked the camera crew, accidentally dropping his towel and revealing that he was completely nude. As he slammed the door shut a few times, the producer sprang back into action. “Open it, open it. We can’t do that,” demanded the producer while hitting the door. Defeated and still nude, Luke finally exited the room and went to his cabin as Aesha walked back into the hallway, clearly horrified. Luke kicked a confused Laura, who was urging him to go back to the jacuzzi, out of his room and locked the door. Laura immediately started hitting and grinding on deckhand Adam Korda as he continued to politely decline her advances. “It’s a little awkward because we work together. She needs to stop this shit,” Adam told the cameras in his confessional.

Back in Margot’s cabin, Aesha relayed what happened to the half-asleep Margot, who was shocked by what just went down. “Oh my god. Ew, he was naked?” Margot asked incredulously. “Did you consent to him being in here?” asked Aesha. “No, I was asleep. I did not invite that at all,” replied Margot firmly. Aesha then crawled into bed next to Margot to watch over her. After staying for a while, Aesha left only when she felt Margot was safe. Meanwhile, Adam was back in his bunk getting ready for bed when Laura entered his cabin. As he laid face down on the bed to feign sleep, trying to get her to leave on her own, Laura crawled into bed with him and straddled him. For the second time that night, a camera operator stepped in. “Laura, I’ve got a message from the producers telling you to come down.” As she rubbed his back, a producer interrupted, “This is when you have to step down and go to your own cabin.” Sheepishly, she made her exit.

Unaware of the Adam and Laura drama, Aesha woke Captain Jason Chambers and took him to the bridge to talk. “We came home tonight and I felt like Luke was kind of wanting to take advantage of Margot’s being drunk,” Aesha told him. “Next thing I know, the power goes out and Luke is fucking running out of Margot’s bed naked. She was completely unconscious.” After Captain Jason confirmed that nothing happened and Margot was safe, Aesha continued: “Luke is so freaked out that he got caught, that he’s locked himself in his room. This is so fucking wrong.”

As Captain Jason comforted Aesha, she tearfully told him: “It just stresses me out if I ever see any woman being taken advantage of.” Unfortunately, Aesha was speaking from her own personal experience. She told the camera in her confessional: “No one has the right to put someone who is unconscious into that position. I have experienced a drunken sexual assault before, and I never want that to happen to anyone else. Margot’s just such a sweet angel that the thought of anyone violating her or being in her space just makes me feel sick.”

With his crew’s safety in mind, Captain Jason immediately sprang into action. He personally plucked Luke from his cabin and escorted him off the boat and into a van to a nearby hotel. The next morning, Margot woke up and tried to piece the night’s events together with her bunkmate Laura. “Luke got into my bed naked and it was weird,” Margot told her. Instead of offering her sympathy or being disgusted by Luke’s actions, Laura asked her: “Was his dick standing?” Across the hall, Chef Tzarina and Aesha talked about last night. “I don’t feel comfortable at all,” Chef Tzarina told Aesha. “You don’t fucking go into a coma’d girl’s room naked,” Aesha said firmly. She then discovered that Captain Jason took Luke off the boat and called a crew meeting to debrief the team. After Aesha gave orders to Laura to start cleaning the guest cabins, she and Chef Tzarina took Margot to her room to fill in the gaps from last night. We see Margot process what happened to her (and what could have happened to her if others hadn’t stepped in) in real-time. It’s heart-wrenching to witness. Margot recalled: “I woke up feeling weird and I knew that whatever happened wasn’t okay. I was like, am I going to wake up and he’s still here and I just have to act cool? But I’m glad that’s not the case because that would have been really hard for me.”

When Margot confided that she feels stupid, Chef Tzarina told her firmly: “Don’t ever feel stupid. He should feel stupid.” “Yeah, but I get, I was so drunk…” Margot trailed off. In a true mic drop moment, Chef Tzarina told her: “Women should be able to get black-out drunk if they want to. We should be able to stand in a room naked and not have anyone do anything to us. You are allowed to be drunk. It’s the other person’s problem.” Comforted by her words, Margot thanks Aesha for taking care of her. After they hug it out, Margot tells the cameras: “I feel disappointed in myself, embarrassed, sad. I’m shocked and I’m processing it, but I honestly just feel so loved. It’s a lot of different emotions at once.”

Soon, Captain Jason gathered the team and told them that he will be terminating Luke’s employment because of his deplorable actions. Captain Jason told the crew: “Our cabin is our safety zone. That door is our boundary. That door is not to be opened unless it’s consensual. To walk into someone’s room without consent, indecent, is my limit.” As the crew expressed their shock, disappointment and anger towards Luke in various confessionals, the only one who was concerned about Luke is Laura. “Are we allowed to say goodbye?” asked Laura. “No,” Captain Jason told her flatly.

Luke soon arrived at the boat and Captain Jason took him down to the crew mess to fire him. “I don’t really know what happened, which is eating me up a little bit,” Luke started. After Captain Jason confirmed he was naked in Margot’s cabin without consent, he told him: “I’ve got nothing else, but to terminate your employment.” Luke accepted his decision, packed up his things and left quickly and quietly. Captain Jason went back upstairs and reiterated to the rest of the crew: “Boundaries. It’s very simple. Don’t cross them. Male or female.”

As the yachties returned to their tasks of cleaning the boat for the next group of charter guests, Laura and Margot worked on polishing a silver coffee table. “I can’t believe Luke is gone,” Laura tearfully said to the woman he sexually assaulted. “You’re sad?” Margot asked in shock. Laura replied: “Poor Luke. I should have just kept him happy. If he came naked into my cabin I’d be like ‘Hello! Yes!'” Laura giggled to a disbelieving Margot. “But it’s his fault. He rejected me…I said I would make him regret it and that came true. Very big time. It’s his karma,” shared Laura gleefully. As Laura went on to moan about not being able to say goodbye to Luke, Margot commented on Laura in her confessional: “What the fuck? Like, how are you pouting right now. It’s all fucked up. She’s fucked up, I think.” Honestly, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Continuing on her reign of terror, Laura later went up to Aesha to complain that Luke was fired instead of just disciplined or put on probation. Aesha backs Captain Jason’s decision, which causes Laura to say in her confessional: “Captain Jason should have given him a chance, have a chat, give a warning, something. But to fire, it’s not fair, it’s not deserved and I don’t agree with it.” The fact that Laura has Luke’s back rather than Margot’s baffles the mind. While Aesha has proved herself to be the ultimate defender and champion of women, Laura has proven the completely opposite.

In the laundry room, Laura again expressed to Margot (Margot! Of all people!) how sad she was Luke is gone. “I think he just meant it as a joke. He’s a funny guy. I don’t think he meant anything bad. He wouldn’t rape you or anything,” Laura said chillingly. Digging herself further into a hole, Laura continued: “It’s not that you said ‘No’ to him the whole night. He felt welcomed to come to you.” Rather than smacking Laura, Margot grabbed Aesha to fill her in on this disturbing conversation.

Margot described to Aesha how Laura then tried to make excuses for Luke’s behavior. “That is so fucking inappropriate. I think that’s horrible,” responded a completely gob-smacked Aesha. Keeping in mind a previous conversation she had with Adam about Laura’s unwanted advances, Aesha immediately went to Captain Jason and told him he needs to have a personal chat with Laura.

“She had the audacity to say to Margot ‘I wish he came to my bed because I would have welcomed him’ and now she’s making Margot feel like shit for having a problem with Luke’s behavior,” Aesha said in disbelief. Captain Jason leaned back, closes his eyes, and expressed his frustration with Laura: He calls both Margot and Adam to the bridge to hear their complaints about Laura directly and to assure them that he will protect them: “You heard what I said down there. It was wrong. We’re a team. We’re moving forward. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Soon, Captain Jason called Laura up to the bridge to hold her accountable. He started: “Two things. One, Adam feels uncomfortable with some moments out, and he’s tried to say no. You have not listened to him. The second thing is, after my multiple speeches with the crew, about boundaries, about respect, did you not go to Margot and say, ‘poor Luke, I wish he would come in and see me?'” As Laura tried to deny the words she absolutely spoke to Margot, Captain Jason plainly told her: “For you to go to Margot and say that, just shows you have not listened to a word I said about boundaries, and you showed little respect and empathy for Margot.” And with that, Captain Jason rightfully terminates her employment. “I don’t think I have done something so wrong that I need to terminated,” Laura said, scrambling. She asked: “Can you give me a warning?” Captain Jason was unmoved, simply telling her: “I can’t go on with you as part of the team in the environment I’m trying to set.” As she headed off to pack her bags and leave the yacht, Captain Jason and Aesha notified the rest of the crew of his decision.

By getting rid of two incredibly toxic crew members, Captain Jason and Aesha have proven to their crew (and their audience) that they will not tolerate sexual assault and that they value safety and empathy above all else. Even though they’ll have to go into the next charter very short-staffed, they decided it is more important for everyone to feel safe and comfortable working on board the Northern Sun.

However, in the mid-season trailer, we see that Luke’s replacement is none other than Below Deck Med alum João Franco, who hasn’t always been kind to women across the franchise and has notably feuded with Aesha in the past. Let’s hope Captain Jason can whip him into shape because we’ve still got a long charter season ahead of us.

If you or someone you know needs to reach out about sexual abuse or assault, RAINN is available 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE (4673), or online at RAINN.org.