As Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan spend the rest of this month in a Romanian jail facing human trafficking charges, Tate’s bodyguard, Bogdan Stancu, gave a tell-all interview with the BBC on Tuesday. And based on Stancu’s comments, it makes a lot of sense that he’d work for an alleged rapist and misogynist social media influencer.
“Some of the girls misunderstood the reality and believed [they would] be his next wife,” Stancu told the British outlet. “When they realized the reality, it’s easy to transform from a friend into an enemy and make a statement to the police.”
Stancu added that he “never doubt[s] Andrew” and instead blames the women whom Tate allegedly victimized with false promises: “They’re young and stupid,” he said, explaining that most of the women who worked for Tate and his web-cam business were 25 or younger.
Before working for Tate, Stancu worked as a former police intelligence officer, which doesn’t entirely surprise me given law enforcement’s long track record of perpetrating and burying acts of gender-based violence.
Romanian prosecutors say that Tate is suspected of being part of a criminal group that lures women via false promises and then sexually exploits them, subjecting them to “physical violence and mental coercion through intimidation, constant surveillance, control and invoking alleged debts” and coercing them to make pornographic videos.
Last week, reporting from Vice World News showed that in 2015, Tate was investigated by police in the U.K. after being accused of rape by two women and beatings and assaults by another. Vice obtained audio and text messages in which Tate told one woman, “I love raping you,” among other threatening and disturbing messages. Police referred the charges to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) after significant delay, four years later, but CPS ultimately declined to prosecute Tate.
Tate denies all of these charges, as well as the human trafficking charges in Romania—even as the business platform described on his own website essentially amounts to human trafficking. In his own viral videos, he endorses violence against women and advises on best practices for strangling them. As Jezebel reported last year, Tate’s viral misogyny has reached young men and children, requiring teachers and community educators to intervene. Vice reported on Tuesday that young boys and teens are increasingly copying Tate’s viral hand gesture that he made to his brother while being arrested, meant to signal support for Tate.
Tate’s bodyguard further discussed how his boss was prophetically wary of some sort of conspiracy against him—which doesn’t exactly take a lot of foresight, if you know you’ve committed crimes. “I would not say ‘paranoid’ but something similar maybe. He wanted to have a normal life and couldn’t—maybe it’s normal to be a little bit more paranoid,” Stancu said. I’d wager one way to achieve a normal life is… to not do any of the things Tate has done...?
Stancu also confirmed the existence of Tate’ and his brother Tristan’s varying kids with different women and said he often traveled with the brothers across Romania to visit said offspring. Last year, Tate said that he has “at least” 10 known children. I am simultaneously surprised and completely unsurprised by this revelation.
Tate was arrested at the end of last month at his and his brother’s shared compound in Romania, where they allegedly conducted their human trafficking business. At the time that the misogynist influencer was arrested, he was very publicly feuding with 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg—a Twitter fight sparked by Tate flaunting his “gas-guzzling” luxury cars to the teenager. In the wake of Tate’s arrest, his fancy cars have been confiscated by the Romanian government, and he recently lost his appeal to be released from jail early. Last week, he was reportedly briefly hospitalized whilst “suffering from certain ailments,” but he’s now back in custody. How very alpha of him!