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(Trigger Warning: Description of violence against women. Reader discretion advised.)
More than six months after self-proclaimed misogynist and controversial influencer Andrew Tate was arrested in Romania, he has been charged with rape, human trafficking, and forming an organised crime group to allegedly sexually exploit women, BBC reported on 20 June, Tuesday.
Tate – and his brother Tristan, who was also arrested and has been charged – had been under criminal investigation since April 2022. Both had denied the allegations.
The trial could to take several years, according to BBC.
A former kickboxer, Tate was back on Twitter in November 2022 after Elon Musk's takeover of the platform.
So, how did he become so (in)famous?
Andrew Tate was born in 1986 in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Luton, England. He worked as a TV producer, before entering the professional kickboxing circuit. But it was his appearance in Big Brother in 2016 that made him a 'celebrity' – and pushed him into the public eye.
In another video, he is shown telling another woman to "count the bruises" he allegedly caused on her.
In October 2017, when both the UK and the US was gripped with #MeToo movement – after Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault allegations – Tate said that women should “bear responsibility” for being raped.
On Twitter, he wrote a series of tweets:
“Women have been exchanging sex for opportunity for a very long time. Some did this. Weren’t abused,” he also said.
The backlash only made him more famous – but the only silver lining was Twitter banning him from their platform.
In a 2018 post on Facebook, he claimed the “decline of Western civilisation” after seeing a poster at Heathrow airport “encouraging girls to go on holiday as opposed to encouraging being a loving mother and a loyal wife."
That should have been the end of Tate's story. But it was not. He emerged more boisterous, and more misogynistic.
According to The Guardian report, since January 2022, repackaged videos from interviews with Tate over the years have been going viral on TikTok. The report, which accessed data, pointed out how in August alone, the clips tagged with his name have been watched more than a billion times.
The so-called university is a learning platform, funded by Tate himself – the members of which are told that they can earn up to £10,000 a month through lessons on crypto investing, and by recruiting others to Hustler’s University, earning 48 percent commission for each person they refer, The Guardian reported.
In one guide, Hustler’s University “students” are told that attracting “comments and controversy” is the key, the newspaper reported.
In one of the videos, posted from an account with Tate’s name and face, he describes: “I inflict, I expect, absolute loyalty from my woman. I ain’t having my chicks talking to other dudes, liking other dudes. My chicks don’t go to the club without me, they are at home.”
In yet another absurd video, he is heard saying that a man shouldn’t let a woman go to a restaurant or nightclub "with her friends if he isn’t there too, and that she should stay at home instead."
Tate has also said “probably 40 percent of the reason” he moved to Romania was because it was "easier to evade rape charges."
A spokeswoman from domestic abuse charity White Ribbon told MailOnline:
Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women coalition, told The Guardian that many of the Tate videos appeared to “clearly violate” TikTok’s terms and said that “by taking no action,” the platform is “facilitating and ultimately profiting from the potential radicalisation of its young male users.”
In a statement, TikTok said it took misogyny seriously, and claimed that that the platform was "actively investigating" which accounts breach its rules.
A spokesperson said: “Misogyny and other hateful ideologies and behaviours are not tolerated on TikTok, and we are working to review this content and take action against violations of our guidelines. We continually look to strengthen our policies and enforcement strategies, including adding more safeguards to our recommendation system.”
(With inputs from The Guardian. The above article was first published in December 2022. It has been updated to reflect the charges pressed against Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan.)
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Published: 12 Aug 2022,12:33 PM IST