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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@ Kat, ambassador, feminist revolution (in exile)
Thank you, it was a long time ago, she died in 1981, so I’m as used to it as it is possible to be.
In related news of scumbag rapist grifters in jail: Nicholas Rossi or WTF his name is.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/05/prisoner-fighting-extradition-bullied-by-cellmates-singing-leaving-on-a-jet-plane
LOL.
Meanwhile, we’re up to 11 votes and still no speaker. Kevin’s caved in to everyone and managed to get a couple more votes, but not enough.
Colbert’s been having Schadenfreude Week over this.
14 votes, now. Kev promises he’ll be speaker by the end of the weekend. I promise pigs can fly.
Of course it’s true that there are a lot of Black women who don’t want the cops defunded. There are a lot of Black women total, and some % are going to disagree with defunding police.
That said, I have no idea whether the % of Black women who do not support demilitarization and service-transfer with accompanying (and proportionate) budget cuts (which is what defund is) is a majority or not. Just because they’re Black women doesn’t mean that if they’re only 8% of Black women they (you?) get to speak for the other 92%.
But there’s another thing as well — They could be the 92% and the supporters of Defund could be the 8% and we would still want the policy decision to be made based on what’s actually best for Black women. The truth is that most Black women, just like most people of every race and gender, are not experts in what spending policies produce the safest communities for the fewest dollars. Those are questions that we can answer with well-constructed research studies — and a great many of those questions have been answered. There are aspects of Defund that can move forward right away without any reduction in safety for Black women, and in fact some of those create increases in safety for Black women.
When outcomes are measurably similar, but have unmeasured (either not-yet-measured or simply impossible-to-measure) effects as well, then getting diverse viewpoints is absolutely vital.
But there is another extreme where things like replacing sewers is just going to cost what it costs and it has to get done and whether any given demographic does or doesn’t like it doesn’t actually matter a whole lot.
I’m not arguing that police reform in a general sense is like that, but there are specific aspects of police funding reform that are like that and we can move ahead with those because they’re good for everyone even as we wait for input on other aspects.
Crip Dyke, pouring money into police departments in dangerous neighborhoods like South Chicago/Chiraq is a start. However there must be a “tough on crime” initiative similar to what cleaned up NYC in the 90s. I hear NYC is bad again now too because they’ve gone soft? Haven’t been there in a while. Problem is a lot of cops are fearful of entering certain hoods. Can’t blame them but that’s where the crime is and that is where Black women are in the most danger. Black women need to divest and stop swallowing the “community” kool-aid. There’s a lot of safe, beautiful places in this country (and the world). We need to get to those places. Education and solid careers are one track for us to get there. Another is coupling up with partners from those safe havens. Either way, it’s time for us fly.
There is no evidence NY’s “tough on crime” policies reduced crime rates. The same decline happened at the same time all over including in cities that did completely different things. And the decline started before those policies were in place.
SpecialFFrog, the beauty of it was the more young men who heard about a cousin or acquaintance doing a little time for something small like selling a little weed, the more they were deterred from doing the same things or worse. It put a sense of fear in them. This dread vibe in the hood kept serious crimes at bay. Women were safer as more men saw men being handcuffed for “roughing” their women up. Some neighborhoods need to be flooded with cops 24/7. Defund the cops in the upper middle class suburbs. NOT in the cities.
What on Earth is going on here? Conservative “tough on crime” talking points all over WHTM comments? Circular firing squads on the right? Did I trip over a portal to Bizarro World in my sleep last night or what?
Meanwhile:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2023-01-05/mccarthy-embroiled-in-longest-speaker-fight-since-1859-podcast
1859, eh? I wasn’t around back then so y’all will have to remind me what happened after that in US politics.
No, you just ran into a commenter who belongs to the demographic with the highest femicide rate: a black woman.
I went to visit someone in the hospital and run one errand, and between when I left and when I got back, Kev had lost another 2 votes!
Meanwhile, in Rape Tater news: He’s had 15 of the cars he tried and failed to get Greta to care about seized, plus 10 properties which will be sold to pay for the investigation and damages. Some of this stuff is in his brother’s name too — let’s not forget about him. I don’t know if Romania does plea bargains for co-conspirators if they flip.
@SpecialFFrog: You’re correct that NYC’s “tough on (Black) crime” policies weren’t the reason rates went down. There’s more crime now everywhere because more people are unemployed/underemployed, broke and desperate. Like the man said, the rent is too damn high. And the food, clothes, etc.
More places are hiring too now tho. But maybe like Tate, men don’t want to work humble regular jobs and just opt for “fast money” i.e. crime.
Wait, what? While I’m sure Tate is quite the piece of work, isn’t the justice system supposed to operate under a presumption of innocence? Evidence-gathering is one thing, but seizing and selling a defendant’s stuff before they’ve been convicted of anything seems … problematic. What happens if the defendant is acquitted? And if they’re willing to do this to a wealthy, connected, white-passing defendant I can only imagine how commonly this is (ab)used versus poor defendants of color, and how often the latter are being railroaded rather than actually being evil.
If anyone else is up at 3:50 AM EST/8:50 AM GMT, McCarthy is finally Speaker of the House, on the fifteenth ballot.
@LoveIsAllWeNeed
When I look at the USA’s violent crime rates I have nothing but empathy with this message. And the black femicide rates are even more abysmal – isn’t it 1 every 6 hours? :O
Even in the UK, as somebody raised in a high crime area I definitely could not get behind “defunding the police”. (Or even abolishing prisons. I was criminal rates jail.)
That’s a topic for another day…
@BatteringLamb
You are exactly right. The right wing Tory government absolutely would never get behind messaging around “defund the police”. They are just committed to less government spending and have slashed police numbers accordingly.
@Surplus to requirements
This does sound very odd to me too. I hope it’s being misreported and actually they just intend to seize the goods pending investigation. If he IS found guilty then I am fine with them selling his goods.
Steph Tohill, I’ve heard there’s an abolish prison idea but I can’t conceive of how that would work with violent criminals like rapists and murderers. Sure, someone who stole a few items from a store, unarmed, might be more efficient for the system to keep them under house arrest (provided the person has a home in the first place), but the US has way too much violent crime to even consider abolishing the prison system for a single moment.
If you can’t conceive of how it would work, you should read up on it. The problems and solutions are too numerous and complex to properly address in random blog comments.
But that said, just to get you started, the idea isn’t that no one would ever again be held securely.
The idea is that prison itself is used as punishment, and because of that prisons are places of punishment — we design them and staff them around the idea that people in them are supposed to suffer.
Securely holding someone who is genuinely dangerous to the public doesn’t have to be punishment. It can be a simple, well-justified safety measure. And for those who have hope of parole someday, the programs within can focus on turning those securely held into better people who eventually do not need to be securely held.
The “prison” idea is that you go in needing to suffer and you come out having “suffered enough”, but inflicting torture to show that inflicting torture is wrong doesn’t work.
Also, there simply aren’t enough people who truly require this form of segregation from the public to justify the huge, institutionalized prison system that we have now.
So the short answer here is that you’re imagining something that doesn’t exist: a movement that would allow dangerous murderers and rapists to walk around freely, read to victimize more people.
But the people who want to abolish prisons make the point that segregating people from the community for purposes of safety doesn’t have to be done with prisons, so abolishing prisons isn’t the same thing as ignoring the need for safety-based segregation/incarceration.
Reading a slogan and thinking that you’re supposed to understand an entire movement based on that is naive. There is a ton of good thinking and good research supporting the prison abolition movement. I’m not saying you have to agree with it all, but rejecting decades of active work without reading and understanding any of it isn’t ultimately going to be very helpful to you.
Crip Dyke, I’ve thought about these things for a long time. I too think the prison industrial complex in the USA is \way too large and too many people are behind bars for things that shouldn’t merit being locked up, in that way at least. I’ve played with the idea that maybe we don’t need prisons at all if we federally institute the death penalty for extremely violent crimes like rape and murder. Definitely for serial rapists and serial killers. But then I changed my mind about the death penalty for a while after researching about it. I go back and forth on it currently. I’m 100% ok with “punishment” for extremely violent and cruel criminals who show no remorse, so “prison as punishment” is not an argument against, in my view. Other types of crimes and misdemeanors can be dealt with differently. I’ll look more into these ideas, like you suggested. However the little looking into it I had done in the past turned me off because arguments were made by Black women activists and as a Black woman myself I am sick and tired of us being the face of radical reforms that are to be made on behalf of men who hate us.
Re: The seizing of Tate’s cars.
This isn’t a totally uncommon procedure where the prosecution authorities believe that recoverable assets may be dissipated pending investigation and trial.
Two main justifications.
If he is ultimately convicted, he would have to pay the costs of the investigation and prosecution; and he may also have to pay compensation to the victims.
If it transpires the vehicles are ‘proceeds of crime’ i.e. they were paid for from monies obtained illegally, then they can be confiscated.
They can also freeze bank accounts. Usually though they allow some drawdown to pay for living expenses and legal fees; but the balance can’t be released. You don’t need a lot of money though to finance a lifestyle in custody.
But of course that’s no good if the assets have vanished by the time of conviction. So you can apply to the court for an order (over here we used to call them ‘Mareva injunctions’)
If he’s ultimately acquitted or not proceeded against then he’ll get them back. This just stops him disposing of them in the meantime. If he’s convicted they’ll auction the vehicles and use the cash for the above purposes.
(You can get some real bargains at police auctions)
I can understand that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRUHYkjwx4
https://abolitionjournal.org/studyguide/
IDK… I can only speak for myself (white, Jewish, disabled, transfeminine) but the idea of living in a place “flooded with cops 24/7” sounds absolutely terrifying. Especially knowing that cops in some places have arrest quotas, having had a couple bad experiences with police already, and personally knowing people who’ve been permanently injured by cops.
If nothing else I’d feel more sanguine about this if cops didn’t lean so heavily male and have such high rates of DV themselves – women relying on armed men for protection feels more to me like the foxes guarding the henhouse every year. But again, I can only speak for my (privileged, unique, exhausted) self.
Dalillama, I checked out your links and got triggered. I used to watch Angela Davis videos and was more in tune with that type of rhetoric but find it utopian. We are a long, long way off from having free mental health care for everyone, if we ever get there. Addressing poverty to decrease crimes probably works to some limited degree but most crimes are not committed as a result of poverty. And the idea that “community networks” are going to eliminate the need for law enforcement only works in safe, functional communities. “Community” is a very triggering word for a lot of us. Here in the USA Black women are expected to carry the entire burden of the “black communitah”. Thank Goddess Gen Z Black girls aren’t swallowing that cultish kool-aid but Gen X and even some millennial Black women are still out here marching on behalf of men who hate them as if it’s still 1965. They said abolition is a feminist project and we know what that means – women’s unpaid labor. Sure, men can be “feminist” too but whenever I hear feminist I picture a woman, because that is 9 times out of 10 who a feminist is. Add to that the abolitionist voice seems to be majority black women or women of color and then we have unpaid black women’s labor. We’ve been volunteering our free labor to “the communitah” for decades, hundreds of years. No thanks. Here’s an idea though; the demographic with the highest violent crime rates in this country should be doing all this free labor to abolish the police state and “build the communitah”. It’s time for Black women to relax and DO US for a change.
Pardon the wall-o-text
Andrea J. Ritchie , author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
This is a living, searchable database gathering past and current incidents of police violence against women of color, including both trans and non-trans women of color.
Derecka Purnell is a lawyer, writer, organizer, and author of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
Jenn Jackson, political scientist, Syracuse University