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BBC
- September 14, 2024 08:05
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Influencer Andrew Tate has been placed under house arrest by a Romanian judge while prosecutors investigate new and serious allegations against him and his brother, Tristan, including sex with a minor and child trafficking. Now several British women have given detailed accounts of rape and sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by Andrew. They are suing Andrew Tate, and their case is expected to be heard at the High Court in London.
Two women who claim they were raped and choked by social media influencer Andrew Tate have spoken to the BBC about their horror.
A woman has claimed for the first time that she was raped by Andrew Tate's younger brother Tristan - also an influencer with millions of followers.
The Tate brothers, aged 37 and 36, are currently facing charges in Romania of human trafficking and forming an organized group to sexually exploit women. Andrew Tate is also accused of rape.
If convicted, both men could be jailed for more than 10 years. They strongly deny the allegations against them.
Andrew Tate is currently under house arrest in Romania. In addition to the charges he faces, prosecutors are also considering new allegations against him, including sexual relations with a minor and child trafficking. Both brothers are being investigated for trafficking 34 other women.
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Two British women, who are not involved in the Romanian case against the Tate brothers, have given detailed accounts of rape and sexual violence allegedly committed by Andrew Tate. The attacks are alleged to have taken place at least 10 years ago, when Tate was living in Luton, England.
Another British woman has made fresh rape allegations against Tristan Tate, saying he put his hands around her throat while raping her.
Anna said she met Andrew Tate in Luton in 2013. After several dates, she said she went to his house.
"He started kissing me... looked at the ceiling and said, 'I'm debating whether I should rape you or not.' "He suddenly grabbed me by the throat, pushed me to the bed, suffocating me too much," she said.
Anna said that then he raped her. According to her, Tate sent her disturbing messages and voicemails about rape and sexual violence.
"Am I a bad person? Because the less you liked it, the more I liked it", he said in a voice message. In one message he wrote: "I like to rape you".
Anna said that he tried to make a joke of the suffocation: "Are you seriously offended that I suffocated a little?". When asked about the messages, Tate declined to comment.
In 2014, Anna told Bedfordshire Police about the alleged assault. Two other women have made similar claims and the investigation has been taken over by Hertfordshire Police.
In 2019, a file was sent to the British Public Prosecutor's Office, but it was decided that there was not enough evidence to bring an indictment.
Another woman, Sienna, described a similar story.
She said she first met Andrew Tate a decade earlier in Luton. "We had a great time and had a few drinks," she says.
She said that they were, as she described, "perfect to spend a night together".
A few months later, Sienna said she was dating Tate again. She claimed that in this case, he attacked her.
"We went to my room... and we started having sex," she said. "Then he put his hands around my throat."
Sienna said she struggled to breathe and then passed out. When he woke up, he was still having sex with her.
"I was very terrified", she said. "I just remember that I couldn't breathe... It was rape."
In the morning, she said that her eye was bloodshot.
"The white of my eye was all red - apparently it's quite common in cases of domestic abuse where there's been strangulation."
A friend of Sienna's has confirmed that she told him about the incident at the time. He also saw the eye injury.
Sienna did not go to the police and said she was sorry.
The BBC is aware of five women in the UK who say they were choked by Tate during sex.
When Tate was interviewed by the BBC in June, he denied that he had raped or had sex with a woman without her consent.
"I know I didn't hurt anyone. It is not in my nature to hurt people", he said.
In the second half of the last decade, Andrew Tate began his ascent to online fame.
The self-proclaimed misogynist's videos on YouTube and TikTok, as well as tweets, have earned him millions of followers and a worldwide profile.
He preached the message aimed at boys and young men that women should be dominated.
In a video, he said that women are "lazy" and added: "There is no way you can know the reality and not be sexist."
Tate has been treated differently by authorities in the UK for the effect it has had on the spread of misogyny online.
His videos have also shown the lifestyle he claimed to have in Romania. Andrew and Tristan Tate are thought to have moved into the country around 2016.
They have been running a webcam business in Luton where women chat and strip online for money.
Romania has one of the largest webcam industries in the world, with half a million employees in the sector. The relocation of the brothers there caused the business to develop.
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At one point, Andrew Tate claimed that he was earning around £400 a month from his webcam business and that "75 women worked for him at the peak of the business".
However, when he spoke to the BBC last year, he played down the figures and boasts, suggesting they were exaggerations and lies.
The adults' business is central to the criminal case brought against them in Romania.
Prosecutors allege that the brothers were trafficking the women into the country – in other words, recruiting them, arranging their transport and providing them accommodation in Bucharest for the purposes of exploitation. Two of the women in the criminal case were brought to Romania from the United Kingdom.
Another British woman, who is not involved in any of the legal proceedings, has spoken about her experience working for the Tate brothers. This is the first time she has spoken publicly.
Daisy has said that in 2017 she was dating Tristan Tate in the UK when he encouraged her to work for the brothers' webcam business in Bucharest. There is evidence that Tristan booked her flight to Bucharest.
Daisy went of her own accord, knowing and agreeing to be involved in the webcam business. She described the controlling environment in which she and other women lived and worked together.
"The girls had their own rooms, but they had no personal space. Everything belonged to Tristan and Andrew, the rooms in which the girls worked were also the rooms in which the brothers slept," she said.
There were strict rules for all the women, Daisy said, where all aspects of their lives were monitored.
This description matches that of the Romanian webcam model, who was also interviewed by the BBC.
"Raluca" said that she was employed by the Tate brothers in 2021. She claimed that "control and manipulation" played a primary role in their business model.
Most of the models who worked for the brothers were "related to them," according to Raluca. She added that some of the women were brought from the United Kingdom.
Romanian prosecutors have said they have claims from three women who describe feeling "controlled" by the brothers. In the case file, some of the women said that they were not allowed to leave the house "alone".
When Andrew Tate spoke to the BBC last year, he denied such allegations and claimed the women worked for themselves. He said that his role was only to "help them find a cameraman".
Days after arriving in Romania, Daisy said she had split from Tristan Tate, but claimed it had not stopped her from trying to have sex.
"I told him, 'no' 10 to 15 times that I didn't want to."
He put his hands around her neck and raped her, she said.
Daisy did not report it to the police.
The BBC spoke to one of her friends, who said that when Daisy returned to the UK, she was upset and told him that Tristan Tate forced her to have sex with him.
Tristan Tate did not comment when asked about the allegations against him.
The Tate brothers' legal troubles have worsened this year.
In addition to the existing charges in Romania, and the new investigation announced last month, they also face a number of other legal threats.
In the United Kingdom, Bedfordshire police have begun extradition proceedings against two brothers on charges of rape and human trafficking dating back to 2012-2015. None of this has anything to do with the women interviewed by the BBC.
And in a civil case in Britain, a judge is expected to decide next month whether the Tate brothers owe millions in unpaid taxes on their online businesses.
Sienna and Anna are suing Andrew Tate, and their case is expected to be heard at the High Court in London. Along with two other women, they accuse him of rape and sexual assault. He intends to dispute the allegations.
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When asked about the allegations, Andrew Tate declined to comment.
"I can't wait for the truth to come out. I can't wait for the truth to come out that Andrew Tate is not guilty because I have never done anything wrong," Tate told the BBC last year.
