A chilling new story in Vice reports that Andrew Tate, currently occupying a jail cell in Romania, “was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and physical abuse in 2015 while he and his brother were running a webcam sex business out of the UK, VICE World News can reveal.”
Unfortunately, UK police dragged out the investigation for four years before handing the case over to the Crown Prosecution Service, which declined to prosecute. Now two women who were the alleged victims in the case are talking to Vice News, telling the news outlet that
they were violently abused – one raped, the other repeatedly strangled – by Andrew Tate, and that UK police and the Crown Prosecution Service mishandled their case, leaving him free to rise to global fame on the back of his unchecked misogyny.
Tate denies the charges.
Had Tate been convicted of these alleged crimes, the world would have been spared the spectacle of Andrew Tate, role model to teenage boys and poster child of toxic masculinity–and his alleged human trafficking in Romania would never have taken place.
According to the two women, Tate’s modus operandi for manipulating women into doing webcam pornography was the same in both the UK and Romania: he would convince the women that they were his girlfriends and then move to put them on camera through what Romanian officials say was “physical violence and mental coercion.” Vice notes that Tate essentially bragged about doing something akin to this (minus the bits about violence and coercion) on now-deleted pages of his own website.
“My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality. Get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together,” the website said.
One of the IK accusers told Vice News that Tate was often violent with his “employees.”
Tate repeatedly assaulted the women who worked for him, said Sally, choking her on at least five occasions, while she witnessed him do the same to her co-workers at least 10 times. The attacks were in keeping with the dominant, controlling “pimp” persona he cultivated …
The alleged abuse took other forms as well. “I saw him smack girls with a belt. I witnessed him doing it to one of the girls I was staying with, because she wanted a lie-in….”
On another occasion, she said she witnessed Tate rape her friend Helen.
The two women left Tate’s webcam business shortly after the alleged rape and went to the Hertfordshire police–only to see the investigation stalled and their case ignominiously dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.
The Vice News story has many more details and is well worth reading in its entirety. Vice is also preparing a documentary on Tate which will include interviews with both women.
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OK, what exactly?
From your link;
My suggestion that Black women build rapport with local police is so that stereotypes can be eliminated via familiarity and friendship. So what’s your idea?
@Cyborgette: The problem is that the reactionaries only ever heard those 3 words (thanks Fox “news”) and jumped to the hysterical conclusion that it was the simplest meaning of those 3 words. They thought people (especially Black) were literally wanting to eliminate all police. It didn’t convey the actual meaning of the movement, which is too subtle for RW radio chuckleheads to yell about between shilling useless shit.
They should have had some slogan emphasizing the counseling, shelter spaces, rehab, alternatives to prison and such. It’s really a great idea, but they didn’t dumb it down enough for the masses. “Reform the Police” would have been better.
@Love Is All: I just worry that if Black women start having a rapport with the cops, the Black men are going to come down on them harder for being “snitches”. Particularly if the cops are White men.
Getting Black cops who wouldn’t be racistly scared of going into “the hood” to cruise by a little more often isn’t a bad idea though. Stop off at a corner store for coffee and donuts, help old ladies carry groceries, play ball with the kids, that kind of thing.
Are we really doing this?
Love has a different perspective than many of us. That’s actually fine. It seems like you’re really pushing to force her to agree with tactics when we already agree on goals.
I worked in anti-violence shelters and set up anti-violence safe home networks. I’m well aware of the number of cops that are violently abusive and, as a result, are more sympathetic to perps of DV than victims. I get that there are good reasons to believe — even empirically backed reasons to believe — that simply flooding communities with cops won’t help. The reasonable hypothesis for **why** it won’t help doesn’t matter tonight, even if it does matter when we’re trying to impose policy solutions.
But some of the things that Love is resisting — including Defund movements — also won’t work in isolation, at least in terms of addressing Love’s priorities. Domestic violence won’t necessarily be reduced by sending social workers out on welfare checks and so-called “nuisance” calls which are about people not liking homeless folks in their metaphorical backyards.
And the one concrete suggestion that she’s made — building relationships with cops to help defuse stereotypes and increase willingness to help — is something that does work. It’s got empirical backing behind it and trans communities have used it so I’ve seen it work to make things better.
Personally I don’t think it’s enough. It doesn’t make things better **enough** and it does nothing to hold bad cops accountable, etc., etc., etc.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad plan, just like the failure of social working responding to welfare checks to solve domestic violence doesn’t mean that that’s a bad plan. These different ideas are targeting different things and we can implement all of them, either separately or as a package, and we can study all of them and continue what works best.
Many of us have disagreements with Love’s resistance to Defund, but I feel like we’ve offered our perspective and it’s starting to feel like badgering. We don’t all have to agree. We’re good people here, and we can trust that.
You can go on believing that in the face of increasingly explicit pronouncements to the contrary
Crip Dyke
Yes! I didn’t know transpeople were doing the same thing. That’s great news. Maybe we can make an alliance so the circle expands and our vulnerable demographics become safer. I’m part of a growing group of Black women that, for the first time ever, are putting ourselves, our safety, our peace FIRST. People aren’t used to it (as is evidenced on this thread), but they’ll adjust as our numbers increase and we become more vocal – unapologetically.
Imagine being told, as Makroth told me, “the system is built for white women. A lot of changes need to happen before black women can use it the same way.” So basically being told to do nothing in the face of danger. Unbelievable.
And being told to get out and march and revolutionize in the streets for change. So if the system is against us and cops will brutalize us, why on earth do people want us out on the streets protesting? Won’t we be the first ones the cops spray, tear gas, taze and beat down to quell the protests?
It’s not Black women’s job to do this. Black women are vulnerable. The “strong Black woman” trope must be laid to rest once and for all. I am not your negro. I am not your revolutionary.
That said, I am not entirely against Defund and Abolition. I’m just against Black women being expected to fight for it and being made the faces of it. Other people can step up and do that. It’s time for Black women to take safer, softer, gentler and easier paths now. We’ve never had that chance before.
@LoveIsAllWeNeed
I keep thinking of Megan Thee Stallion and how her first instinct was to protect that poisonous man who literally SHOT HER IN THE FEET.
It’s sad and I wholeheartedly am on board with black women finally putting themselves first and not feeling any degree of “racial loyalty” to those who are abusing them.
It’s so deeply ingrained in us I think it’s in our DNA/cellular memory by now. Really only in the last couple of years that Black women are starting to come out of our Stockholm Syndrome.
It’s one thing for the “the communitah” to expect us to be foot soldiers, but when people who aren’t even Black expect it? The entire country? The entire world?
@Love is All We Need, @Crip Dyke
Thank you both, this discussion has been really eye opening.
@Love Is All: So you seem to be saying that Black women should be allowed to deal with the problems… in womanly ways.
I mean, duh? The manly ways aren’t working, let’s try something different. Let’s try ALL the different things.
If someone as outwardly tough and confident as Megan Thee falls back on that old programming of “protect the menz”, you can see how deeply that toxicity is rooted. At least she testified against him and he’s going to prison. I hope women of all ethnicities can do the same.
@Imperious: Give it a rest, you’re perilously close to trolling and that’s against the house rules.
Last one from me, because I have better things to do than to keep engaging with someone who’s brimming with so much contempt, who talks to me like this:
Nor am I going to let it slide that you all repeatedly tried to gaslight me just for making conclusions from commenting history that were evident to me. It disgusts me how easily and thoroughly basically the entire active commentariat rolled over to borderline reactionary rhetoric for the sake of a single individual woman of colour, to the point of throwing one of your own under the bus *yet again* (my understanding is that Dali has been commenting here for years and years). I recently came to realize that being maliciously misinterpreted is a common chronic problem among autistic people and probably other neurodivergent folks as well, which makes all this even worse. I don’t think there’s much of anything I tolerate less.
Frankly, I was holding back to give space for other POC to chime in, but I’ve noticed that a lot of formerly active POC are basically gone. Maybe they’re the smart ones and I was stupid for bothering.
Oh well, the actual reason I’m bothering to post even this is to link to a couple of things I ran across today. Just random stuff. I figure it’s better than simply throwing more oil on this fire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJfUF6nw5Xg
https://www.ttcriders.ca/budget2023
@Impish: We’ve been taking your words completely literally, exactly as you put them on the screen. That’s what all my autistic friends appreciate, though I know it’s different for everyone. It’s all anyone of any brain wiring can do in written conversation anyway (Unless there are way too many emoji, which… no). We’re responding to the pixels.
If you’re thinking it’s “malicious”, that would be a you problem. You’re all up in your feels for something that quite literally hasn’t happened.
If @Dalillama feels she’s “been thrown under the bus”, I am sure she is perfectly able to stick up for herself, eloquently. If she wants to, or not. No white knighting needed.
You are perfectly free to reply to @Love Is All, but continually attacking her only is looking like targeted trolling. Explain, engage, give your POV, but don’t come out of nowhere into @David’s house and whine like the RW and manosphere (mostly neurotypical!) do.
(Also maybe someone else is Black? I dunno. To me Crip Dyke is some purple octopus thing, Lou C Purr is a tortie cat, Makroth’s a sparkly horned critter, Alan’s an English sheep, Dali’s a kickass Girl Genius, David’s a mammoth and most of us are geometric patterns.
I have met many, many online friends IRL in the past 30+ years, and back in the days before digital cameras and fast downloads, I had no idea what race or age many of them were till we met F2F. Like, “Huh, I thought you were a buff White woman but you’re an average-size hapa! Cool.”)
My dad was a wool sorter; so that’s pretty appropriate.
And some people here have seen pics of me in my misspent youth; so they’ll know I could have used this as a passport photo back then.
@ an impish pepper
That second link was especially interesting. But may I ask, what’s “TCC”? I searched the site and it wasn’t explained anywhere! I’m guessing from the context it’s a transport thing; but is it the organisation or a specific scheme?
But anyway, that all sounded very familiar to some debates were having here. In London they just force people onto public transport by making it very expensive, and difficult, to drive there.
Oxford city centre (where they have a lot of bikes) has been designed to make motoring psychologically unpleasant. It’s literal aversion therapy. Like a junction will be designed so you can see your destination just in front of you, but will send you on a frustrating route where you can see it getting further away.
What a profoundly predictable response from someone who also thinks splash damage is okay and justifiable because it’s just a metaphor and it’s worth it to hit the “correct” target.
@Alan
The Toronto Transit Commission are the folks who run the transit system in Toronto. They’re I think funded partly by the city and partly by fares, which makes it quite illustrative that fares are being hiked at the same time as the police force is getting more money. The police in Toronto have been getting a lot of attention lately mainly for raiding homeless camps. Statistically, though, some of the people there are probably rapists, and I’m sure the police were just kindly trying to protect the rest of the unhoused population from them.
@GSS:
:claps hands in child-like glee:
@Crip Dyke: I mean, a purple octopus is cool, plus all those arms could really type fast.
@GSS Ex-Noob
Dalillama is actually a wee bit pissed off about that, but Dalillama has had a bastard of a week at work and is very tired. I also posted links to people who have said what I would say more eloquently than I in fact could do, which is one reason I chose those specific posts, the other being that they were Black women, in order that Love couldn’t simply dismiss the information based on the source. Which she did anyway, by defining recent university graduates as “old and out of touch” rather than actually addressing anything in my post or the links therein. If she’s not going to bother to actually deal with information counter to her line of bullshit, there’s simply not any point in talking to her anymore, which is my present plan. (The bullshit about autism in the other thread angered me to the point of breaking that policy).