• The popular influencer has been charged with rape.
Image: Commons Wikimedia
Two women who say they were raped and strangled by the controversial social media influencer, Andrew Tate, have spoken to the BBC about their experiences.
Another woman has alleged, for the first time, she was raped by Mr Tate’s younger brother, Tristan - also an influencer with millions of followers.
The Tate brothers, aged 37 and 36, currently face charges in Romania of human trafficking and forming an organised group to sexually exploit women. Andrew Tate is also charged with rape.
If found guilty, the two men could be jailed for more than 10 years. They strongly deny the charges against them.
Andrew Tate is currently under house arrest in Romania. In addition to the charges he already faces, prosecutors are considering new allegations against him, including having sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons. Both brothers are also being investigated for trafficking 34 more women.
Now, two British women not involved with the Romanian case against the Tate brothers, have given detailed first-hand accounts to the BBC, against Andrew Tate, of alleged rape and sexual violence. The allegations date back at least 10 years, to when Mr Tate was living in Luton.
Another British woman has made a new allegation of rape against Tristan Tate, saying he put his put his hands around her throat as he did so.
Anna (not her real name) told us she went out with Andrew Tate in Luton in 2013. After a few dates, she says she went back to his house.
“He started kissing me... and he just looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘I’m just debating whether I should rape you or not. Out of the blue he just grabbed me by the throat, smashed me to the back of the bed, strangling me extremely hard.”
Anna says he then raped her.
She says after the attack, Mr Tate sent her disturbing text messages and voice notes about rape and sexual violence.
“Am I a bad person? Because the more you didn’t like it, the more I enjoyed it,” he said in a voice note.
In a text he wrote: “I love raping you.”
Anna says he also tried to pass the strangulation episode off as a joke: “Are you seriously so offended I strangled you a little bit?”
When the BBC asked him about the messages, Mr Tate declined to comment.
In 2014, Anna told Bedfordshire Police about the alleged attack. Two other women made similar allegations, and a police investigation started.
In 2019, a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it was decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges.
Another woman, who we are calling Sienna, describes a similar story.
She says she first met Andrew Tate a decade ago in Luton: “We got on really well and we had a few drinks.”
She says they had what she describes as “a standard one-night stand”.
A few months later, Sienna says she met Mr Tate again.
She claims that on this occasion he attacked her.
“We went to my bedroom... and we started having sex,” she says. “That was when he put his hands around my throat.”
Sienna says she struggled for air, and then lost consciousness. When she came to, she says he was still having sex with her.
“I was absolutely terrified,” she says. “I just remember gasping for air... It was rape.”
In the morning, she says she had a bloodshot eye.
“One of the whites of my eyes had just gone completely red - apparently it's quite common in domestic abuse cases where there's been strangulation.”
A friend of Sienna has confirmed to the BBC that she told him about the incident at the time. He also says he saw her eye injury.
Image: Commons Wikimedia
Sienna didn’t go to the police and says she regrets it.
BBC Panorama is aware of a total of five women in the UK who say they were strangled by Mr Tate during sex.
When we interviewed him in June last year, he denied ever having strangled or having had sex with a woman without her consent.
“I know I've never hurt anybody. It's not in my nature to hurt people,” he said.
Andrew Tate denied strangling accusations during a BBC Panorama interview in 2023
In the second half of the last decade, Andrew Tate began his rise to online fame.
The self-proclaimed misogynist’s videos on YouTube and TikTok, and posts on Twitter, gained him millions of followers and a worldwide profile.
He preached a message aimed at boys and young men that women should be dominated.
In one video, he said women were “intrinsically lazy” and added: “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.”
Mr Tate has been singled out by authorities in the UK for the effect he has had in spreading misogyny online.
His videos also showed off the high-rolling lifestyle he claimed to lead in Romania.
Andrew and Tristan Tate are thought to have moved to the country around 2016.
They had been running a webcamming business in Luton - where women chat and strip online for money.
Romania has one of the largest webcam industries in the world, with over half a million employees in the sector. The brothers’ move there apparently saw the business taking off.
At one point, Andrew Tate claimed he was making £400,000 per month from webcamming and that “75 women worked for him at the peak of it all”.
However, when he spoke to the BBC last year, he downplayed these boasts, claiming they had been exaggerations and lies.
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