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September 10, 2024 - 11:30am
Very few men face prosecutions for rape, even though police chiefs describe violence against women as a “national emergency”. There has been a great deal of hand-wringing over this state of affairs, yet an “influencer” accused of rape and sex trafficking is regarded as a role model by millions of other men.
Said influencer, Andrew Tate, has 10 million followers on X, a following apparently unimpressed by a string of serious charges against him in Romania, where he now lives. Last night’s Panorama programme on the BBC revealed that Tate was investigated in the UK a decade ago after several women went to the police making allegations against him, but was never charged.
The programme hadn’t even finished when Tate, who is under house arrest in Romania, took to social media. He castigated the BBC, bringing up the cases of former employees Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards, and dismissed his accusers as “girls lying about things that happened 14 years ago trying to get some money”.
It was a blatant attempt at deflection, but Tate’s reference to Savile is instructive. Savile is now recognised as one of the country’s worst sex offenders and we know that some of his victims went to the police while he was still alive, only to be dismissed. Tate insists that he’s innocent of all the charges against him in Romania, but Panorama focused on an earlier period of his life when he and his brother Tristan were living in Luton.
The programme’s reporter, Oana Marocico, interviewed two women who say they were raped by Tate a decade ago. Both women tell a similar story with one crucial detail: they describe what began as consensual sex and then turned violent, alleging that Tate choked and raped them. Anna (not her real name) says she then received a series of text and voice messages from Tate admitting what he had done. “Are you seriously so offended I strangled you a little bit?” he is alleged to have asked.
The woman went to the police in 2014. Two other women reported similar allegations and a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service in 2019, but it was decided there was not sufficient evidence to bring charges. There are obvious questions to be asked about that decision, given that more than one woman accused Tate of a specific —and life-threatening — sexual fetish.
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SubscribeNow Andrew Tate is clearly pond scum, but you could argue that these cases would be hard to get to a conviction. As you explain it the sex is consensual, and it only becomes rape when his hands move to her throat. Choking – hard as I find to understand it – does seem to be part of sex for some people. Arguably the best would be if choking (like knife play, bondage or whipping) was classified as so outlandish that it would be deemed non-consensual unless there was explicit agreement beforehand, but that does not seem to have been generally established yet. And even if it had, all Tate would have to do is lie, and he would still get off on ‘reasonable doubt’.
…and adding Trump into something with which he is clearly not involved looks like gratuitious politicising.
That’s what happens when you get campaigners (like this author) posing as journalists. They care nothing for due legal process and fair trials, provided their designated victims get punished. However repulsive we might find some of Andrew Tate’s behaviour (mercifully, I haven’t been exposed to much of it), we must assume innocence until proven guilty or cease to be a civilised society.
When will people wake up to the fact that Tate is merely the symptom of a much wider malaise in Western society – the attempted and ruthless emasculation of men and, in many cases, their legitimate desires to associate with their own sex. This especially applies to the open war on white, cis-gender males as indulging in dangerous and ‘toxic’ masculinity. Then the liberal ‘progressivist’ left turn around and seem genuinely perplexed as to why a demigod like Tate is so popular!
the cure for awful role models is better role models. The media are very happy with a boy who wants to be a girl, not so happy with a boy who wants to be a warrior. The people who call this out are so easily parodied that their voices don’t have to be listened to.
Same here – I had always considered him to be a fairly obvious reaction to the extreme feminisation of society.
I wouldn’t be too familiar with his thinking from 10-15 years ago, but there is an online interview with Piers Morgan in which he makes some damning and reasonably accurate observations of life in London. He also considers Bucharest to be far safer.
I don’t know much about Tate but my impression of him is poor to say the least. I have been suprised though by how long he was kept in prison and how his guilt is routinely just assumed absent any actual trial.
“Sentence first, verdict afterwards” — Queen of Hearts, and the modern judicial system.
They want to take Tate down because of his ideology. In UK, at least, authorities have been consistently non committal about rape, particularly of the Islam type.
I don’t know anything about this Tate guy, but my initial reaction was innocent until proven guilty. Ya know – the foundation of the justice system. And then the author brings up the Trump case, with comments vague enough to suggest he was convicted a raping someone in a criminal case. This is why people hate the media. Unherd isn’t doing itself any favours here.
Agree. This guy has said some truly awful stuff, and isn’t someone I would like my child to be looking up to, but none of that makes him guilty. Hopefully he gets a fair trial.
I have zero interest in this guy. Have never read or listened to one thing. I know he’s some kind of ultra-masculine dude. Meh
Is he a Muslim? No? He’ll be convicted.
He is actually a recent convert to Islam – so yes he is a Muslim!
QED!
Cranking out the old saw of Savile like some invoked spectre to give it its umpteenth booster-shot is truly, truly depressing. Smith is working at the level of clickbait here. And do note zero link to corroborate her wild and wilful claim
It was consensual… stop it. It can’t be rape. It could be assault if not previously agreed but that would be his word against theirs. Has no legs whatsoever. The author must realise this?
I don’t like Tate but he and TR have shown how far the deep state will go to get rid of people singing from the wrong hymn sheet.
Expect them to put TR into an Islamist infected prison shortly where he will be in great danger.