Andrew Tate’s Legal Headaches Just Got a Whole Lot Worse

Andrew Tate’s legal woes deepened on Wednesday, as lawyers representing four UK women who allege they were abused by the notorious misogynist influencer served legal papers on him at his Romanian property.

The women pursuing the civil case claim they were subjected to serious abuse by Tate, including multiple rapes, serious physical assaults including strangulations and beating with a belt, and coercive and controlling behaviour, when he was living in the UK about a decade ago. 

The experiences of three of the women – two of whom were recruited by Tate to work for his webcam business, the other of whom was in a romantic relationship with him – were first revealed by VICE News earlier this year. The fourth complainant, who says she was strangled until she was unconscious when she had sex with Tate after meeting him on a night out in his hometown of Luton in 2014, joined the suit earlier this month.

Jack Beeston, an associate at McCue Jury & Partners, the UK law firm handling the women’s civil case, was among the team serving the papers, known as a “letter before claim,” at Tate’s compound on the outskirts of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, where Tate and his brother Tristan are under house arrest pending charges of human trafficking.

He told VICE News that the developments mean this is “a big day” for the alleged victims.

“It’s the formal start of their search for justice,” he said. “They’ve been sidelined and ignored and dismissed for a very long time. This is a major step forward, beginning the allegations to Tate’s door, literally.”

As revealed by VICE News earlier this year, three of the women filed police complaints over Tate’s alleged abuse in 2014 and 2015. But the investigations were hit with multiple delays, for which police eventually apologised, taking years before the file was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), whose job involves assessing whether there is a realistic prospect of conviction, in 2019. At that point, the CPS declined to prosecute.

The claimants in the civil suit hope that their case may also prompt UK police to reopen their case against Tate. They have raised about £20,000 for their legal case through a crowdfunding platform.

One of the claimants said in a statement: “After such a long fight for justice, it feels good to finally be taking a positive step forward. While this experience has been extremely traumatic for us, we have taken strength in the fact that we have decided to take a stand, and are not alone. 

“We hope that bringing this claim will encourage other people to speak out against their abusers, no matter how powerful they are.” 

Beeston said that while Tate did not come to the door of the property – others present had told him they heard voices inside telling security to instruct the legal team to “fuck off” – the papers had been served by delivering the documents to the property, giving Tate’s legal team 14 days to respond. 

VICE News understands that the legal documents outline allegations that Tate raped one complainant multiple times, choked her until blood vessels in her eyes burst, threatened to shoot her with a firearm and gave her an STD. Another was also allegedly choked until her blood vessels burst, infected with an STD and threatened – with threats to her life, and to post naked pictures of her online – and another allegedly strangled and raped at least five times.

Tate and his legal team did not respond to VICE News requests for comment.

The latest developments come just a day after Romanian prosecutors upgraded a charge against Tate, his brother Tristan, and their two co-accused, Georgiana Naghel and Luana Radu, to a more serious charge of human trafficking in continued form. An additional victim had also been added to the case, a spokesperson for Romania’s directorate for investigating organised crime and terrorism said Tuesday.

Romanian authorities also opened a separate human trafficking investigation on Tuesday against a close associate of the Tate brothers, a Romanian national named Vlad Obuzic. Obuzic often used the pseudonym Joe Lampton on social media, where he posted a stream of content that closely resembled much of Tate’s output, boasting of his control over young women, some of whom are alleged to have been forced to have his name tattooed on them. Obuzic is accused of human trafficking and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit seven women by forcing them to produce pornographic material online.

Tate, a 36-year-old British-US citizen with a massive social media following, was arrested alongside his co-accused in late December, and held in custody until he was released under house arrest at the end of March. Prosecutors are expected to commit them for trial later this month.