{"id":34641,"date":"2023-06-02T07:11:21","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T05:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riseproject.ro\/investigations\/uncategorized\/the-women-who-spoke-out-against-the-tate-brothers-rape-violence-and-sexual-exploitation\/"},"modified":"2023-06-01T12:24:43","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T10:24:43","slug":"the-women-who-spoke-out-against-the-tate-brothers-rape-violence-and-sexual-exploitation","status":"publish","type":"investigations","link":"https:\/\/www.riseproject.ro\/en\/investigations\/uncategorized\/the-women-who-spoke-out-against-the-tate-brothers-rape-violence-and-sexual-exploitation\/","title":{"rendered":"The women who spoke out against the Tate brothers: rape, violence and sexual exploitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere is no victim,\u201d stated<\/a> Tristan Tate, brother of Andrew Tate, one of the most famous men on the internet, before the two were heard in Bucharest, Romania, by the Terrorism and Organized Crime Investigation Department (DIICOT) in January 2023. The two are being investigated for establishing a criminal group, human trafficking, and rape.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Four women told prosecutors how they were held against their will and raped, assaulted or forced into sex work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

RISE Project has obtained the testimonies of the victims \u2013 young women from the United States, the Republic of Moldova, and Romania. Then, it set out to track the early days of the Tate brothers\u2019 webcam empire in Great Britain, amassed over 50 accounts of women and girls in their proximity, from Prague to Chi\u0219in\u0103u and Dubai, and pieced together the profile of a potential human trafficker, popular across the globe.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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His opinions on violence against women and rape victims, cosumed by millions of fans all over the world, encourage boys to despise their sisters and girlfriends, and even commit<\/a> violent acts against their female colleagues and teachers, warn<\/a> school safety organizations in the UK. Andrew Tate \u201cis brainwashing a generation of boys, and it’s very frightening,\u201d stated<\/a> one teacher in London. His youngest fans are ten years-old<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The accusations made by Romanian anti-mafia prosecutors are overturning the idol\u2019s image of a responsible businessman. Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, the prosecutors allege, were actually recruiting women and girls, in order to exploit them for online porn.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe police have fabricated the evidence\u201d was the Tate brothers\u2019 defense<\/a> during the three months they were in police custody. Recently placed under house arrest, the two have maintained their total innocence, after launching a public support campaign and trying to intimidate<\/a> the victims who had testified against them.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201dAre they really that dangerous?\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Irina* is a blond girl with almond-shaped eyes who goes to high school in Bucharest. Last winter, Tristan Tate (34) started following her<\/span> on Instagram. He is the brother of Andrew Tate (36), one of the most famous men on the Internet. \u201cWe matched on Tinder, he told me he was in London\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Adela* teaches at a private kindergarten in Bucharest. She is also very beautiful. She, too, received an Instagram message from Tristan last year, asking her out for coffee. \u201cHe told me I was interesting and he\u2019d like to get to know me better. After briefly researching him and finding out what he does for a living, I declined. (…) I think if you\u2019re slightly more vulnerable, getting a message from an influential, successful man can pique your interest. You feel you\u2019re special and\u00a0 you don\u2019t give it a second thought that maybe something isn\u2019t quite right,\u201d says Adela.<\/span><\/p>\n

In December 2022, a few weeks after Tristan had tested the waters with high school student Irina*, he was arrested in Romania, alongside his brother and two of their accomplices for human trafficking and rape charges. Since early 2021, the DIICOT prosecutors write, the Tate brothers formed an organized crime group in Romania, with the aim of sexually exploiting girls and women from several countries. The head of the network was Andrew, the older brother, with Tristan serving as deputy<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

They ran their operations on the outskirts of Bucharest<\/span>, in the suburban town of Voluntari: a villa with a pool and a garage<\/span> for swashbuckling, and another house within a stone\u2019s throw<\/span>, in the American Village residential compound, for the girls and for webcamming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Andrew Tate supervising in his Voluntari villa, source: Tik Tok<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The recruiting pool, however, was global<\/span>. The two men used social media platforms and dating apps in order to seduce young women from all over the world and force them into sex work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Under 18<\/b><\/h2>\n

Underaged girls and virgins were always on the list of potential Tate brothers\u2019 victims. In a video from \u201cThe Tate Movement\u201d<\/span> series, Tristan <\/span>brags<\/span><\/a> that he takes the virginity of two-three girls each year and promises he can also teach his fans the recipe for deflowering.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In another <\/span>video<\/span><\/a>, the younger brother recounts that he took the virginity of one of the girls currently making money for him when she was 17 and that she now has 200,000 Instagram followers.<\/span> \u201cWhy would you be with a woman who\u2019s not a virgin anyway?,\u201d<\/span> Andrew rhetorically asks himself in a 2014 <\/span>interview<\/span><\/a>, which he gloriously ends with the sentence \u201cI\u2019m a pimp superstar.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The two went on to exploit minors for personal gains in Romania as well. Before being arrested, Andrew and Tristan Tate were constantly throwing parties at their house, with young women aged 16 to 22 on the guest list, \u201cespecially naive girls, with personal issues,\u201d whom they sought to recruit, as one of the victims told the DIICOT prosecutors<\/span>. \u201cThey even repeatedly asked us, who were already working for them, to talk to the girls attending the parties and get them to also do OnlyFans, by presenting it to them as a life of luxury,\u201d the young woman added.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Another woman who was locked up at the Voluntari villa told prosecutors that \u201ca blond girl is working for Andrew (…) I saw her at their house and I know from B. that she is 17 years-old.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from them, there was an endless stream of young women at their disposal, whom they could lure in with sweet talk and success stories. We\u2019ve reached out to dozens of social media accounts<\/span> belonging to victims or witnesses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re doing a story about the Tates? (…) anything you want to know I can provide for you.\u201d – we got a message the day after we phoned a couple of young women who attended the brothers\u2019 parties. \u201cI am Tristan Tate.\u201d, said the author. He insisted that he does not commit any crimes and that \u201cAs of today ZERO women have come forward to say anything negative about me.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Then we came back with a question about the accusations of the four women in the human trafficking case. He wasn\u2019t friendly anymore. He denied the existence of the testimonies \u201dno woman said those things about us\u201d and \u201cNo statement from any woman says anything of the kind\u201d. The he told us abruptly that he didn\u2019t want us to credit him with any of these statements and, after we explained that the rules of this game say he should have told us that before he talked to us, he warned us he will put us on the “long list” of people he was going to sue.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t

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