This article contains references to sexual assault and rape.
By now, you've almost certainly heard the name ‘Andrew Tate’. Over the last few years, the self-proclaimed misogynist influencer has built an enormous following online, and has become known for his offensive comments about women. These include claiming that women should ‘bear responsibility’ for being raped; that he dates women aged 18-19 so that he can ‘make an imprint on them’; and that if a woman accused him of cheating, he would ‘bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up, bitch.’
These comments – of which there are dozens more – have been described as ‘extreme misogyny’ by domestic abuse charities, capable of radicalising men and boys to be commit violent acts against women.
Sadly, then, it came as little shock when three women came forward in April this year accusing Tate, 36, of sexually and physically assaulting them between 2013 and 2016, while Tate was living in the UK, and that a UK law firm would be launching civil legal action against him.
Taking on the identity of a persecuted religion like Islam allows Tate to mask his vitriol in the politics of persecution.
Seeing these other alleged victims speak out is what gave a fourth woman the courage to also come forward this month. The 30-year-old woman claims that Tate strangled her until she lost consciousness and raped her. Tate said he ‘owned her’ and threatened to kill her after he raped her, according to the woman.
A spokesperson says that Tate “vehemently denies these accusations,” and that “all sexual acts that Andrew has partaken in have been consensual”. But on 14th June, Tate was served legal papers by the claimant's lawyers in Romania, where he is under house arrest after being detained in December on suspicion of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organised crime group – allegations he also denies.
Here, the alleged fourth victim shares her story exclusively with GLAMOUR, and why she's demanding justice not only for herself and Tate's other alleged victims, but for all survivors of sexual violence. As told to Ali Pantony.
I first met Andrew Tate at a bar in Luton in 2014 when I was 21. I was out with one of my close friends for a quiet drink, and we hadn't planned on meeting anyone. But my friend, who knew Andrew's brother Tristan, spotted him and Andrew at the bar. The two of them started chatting, so naturally, I got talking to Andrew. I don't really remember what we talked about, but I remember him being charming and friendly. He was confident and quite cocky, but I didn't mind. He bought us drinks and it wasn't long before we got a taxi back to his.
We had sex that night without incident. I stayed the night and he booked me a taxi home the next morning. It was just a normal one night stand, and he seemed like a nice enough guy.
We WhatsApped on and off over the next couple of months. It wasn't anything serious and we certainly weren't together, but he was a bit older, he seemed quite charming, and honestly, I think I just liked the fact that someone was interested in me. So eventually, we agreed to meet up again after a shift he was doing as a doorman at a bar near where I lived at the time. He came over at around 3am and that's when we had sex for a second time. But it was nothing like the first.
He was on top and suddenly, out of nowhere, he put his hands around my neck and started to choke me. He was much stronger than me and I couldn't resist or speak out. I just froze. It was terrifying. I remember the sheer panic. He kept saying, “I own you”. That's when he strangled me so hard that I lost consciousness.
I don't know how long I was passed out for, but when I eventually came round, he was still having sex with me. I was so confused at first and didn't know what was happening. I'd passed out before from having an injection at the doctors', but this wasn't the same – normally when you faint, you kind of know it's going to happen; you feel woozy, lose your sight and vision, and pass out. But this was a lot more confusing because there was no oxygen to my brain, and it was dark, so I couldn't remember where I was or who I was with.
Talking about misogyny is important, but how we talk about it is even more so.
When I eventually realised what was happening, I was absolutely terrified. When he eventually stopped, he seemed uncontrollably angry. He kept saying things like, “I own you,” “You belong to me”. At one point he pinned me up against the wall and said he was going to kill me. I thought I was going to die.
I just wanted him to leave, but I was so afraid of what he might do at that point that I was terrified of upsetting him or doing anything to make him even more angry or aggressive than he already was. Eventually, he fell asleep. I lay next to him, frozen, too scared to sleep.
The following morning when he woke up, he started getting dressed and said that if he'd got a parking ticket, he would come back and kill me. I didn't drive so had no idea what the parking restrictions were like in the area. I genuinely believed him, so I sat there for what felt like a lifetime, terrified he would come back. I was relieved when he didn't.
It might sound weird, but I was so pleased that he was gone, that I just wanted to carry on as normal and started getting ready for work. In the mirror, I saw that the whites in one of my eyes had turned completely red from how hard he had choked me. I Googled it and read that it happens a lot in domestic abuse cases, where someone gets strangled and the lack of oxygen to the brain makes the blood vessels burst. I felt embarrassed. What was I going to say at work? I lied and said I had an eye infection.
It might sound silly, but the world was different in 2014 and I was so young and vulnerable, that I didn't realise how serious it was. Back then, I assumed that once you agreed to have sex with a man, no matter what happened, it couldn't possibly be rape. To me, ‘rape’ was when a strange man grabbed you from a dark alley and forced you to have sex with him. I didn't think a rapist could be someone you had, at some point, consented to have sex with.
I think that's why I blamed myself for what Andrew did to me for a very long time. In my mind, it was my fault because I had agreed to have sex with him in the first place.
I lived with that denial, ignorance, minimisation – whatever you want to call it – for a long time, until the first UK lockdown in March 2020, when he started to get famous. Suddenly, he was everywhere I looked, and I couldn't escape him. I told my flatmate and he said, ‘Do you realise that what he did to you is not OK?’ That's the first time I thought of it as what it was: assault. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that what happened was awful, and the full force of what had actually happened finally hit me. I realised that he had raped me.
The more famous he became, the more difficult I found it. Like most of us in lockdown, I got really into TikTok, and he was all over that platform. I banned certain hashtags to do with him from appearing in my feed, but the videos still cropped up without hashtags, and people I knew were sharing posts about him on social media – not because they agreed with him, but raising awareness of the disgusting, misogynistic things he was saying. He was everywhere and I couldn't get away from him. I came off Instagram and TikTok for quite a while, but I couldn't ignore what had happened to me anymore.
It was hard to admit that I'd lost control in that situation, and to think of myself as a victim. To carry the label of being a victim of sexual assault is a hard thing to reconcile with, because it's always going to be something that happened to me. I can't change that. It's a scary thing to admit.
Then stories started to come out; stories similar to mine, from other women. I realised I wasn't the only one. Honestly, it was a relief. Of course it made me sad to know that there were other people who have alleged the same things as me and worse, but suddenly, I felt less alone. When the three other claimants came forward in April – claiming that Andrew raped and abused them too – I knew I was more likely to be believed. I thought, ‘If it’s just me, people will think I'm making it up because it was so long ago, and he's famous now’. Knowing there are other women out there gave me the strength to come forward, too.
I know that Andrew has denied the allegations, and he is entitled to say whatever he wants to say. Only the courts can decide what the truth is. One of the main reasons I am speaking out is because we desperately need wider conversations about consent in our society. What happened to me was not OK, and I know now that it was not my fault. I did not consent to being choked, and when I passed out, I was unable to consent at all. That makes it rape, and people need to know that.
We need to teach men and women about consent from a young age, so that this kind of thing doesn't keep happening. The amount of men and boys who see Andrew as a role model proves how far we still have to go. One of my friends is a teacher, and she told me they recently did an exercise at school where they asked the kids who their hero is, and a lot of the young boys said ‘Andrew Tate’. It's terrifying to think about.
But if coming forward and finally speaking out means that other women have cause to share their experience, or that it will change the way people treat consent, then hopefully some good will have come from all this.
The victims are crowdfunding the case via CrowdJustice and need the public to get behind them. They’ve raised almost £21,000 so far and are trying to reach £50,000 to continue the legal action. To donate, please visit crowdjustice.com.
For information or support regarding rape and sexual abuse, contact Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222.
