The magistrates of the Bucharest Court have motivated the decision to extend the 30-day pre-trial detention for brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate and for the two women accused of helping them sexually exploit their victims, Georgiana Naghel and former policewoman Luana Radu. The judges showed how the girls working in the videochat studio controlled by the two brothers were tormented and how one of them was allegedly raped in the context of a sexual orgy.
According to the evidence submitted by DIICOT prosecutors, Andrew and Tristan Tate are alleged to have set up an organized criminal group operating both in Romania and in the US and UK. The two are accused of recruiting several young women through a method known generically as „loverboy” and then sexually exploiting them in a videochat studio opened in Pipera.
According to the court’s motivation, after recruiting the girls, the British were helped by Georgiana Naghel and Luana Radu to force them „to perform pornographic acts with a view to producing and disseminating pornographic material by forcing them to perform forced labour”.
In this sense, investigators claim that the Tate brothers initially approached future victims via social media platforms.
After a period of convincing them that they wanted serious relationships, including marriage, the women were brought to the videochat studio, where, „ through the exercise of acts of psychological coercion resulting from intimidation, surveillance, control, the invocation of fictitious debts”, they forced them to work for them as sex workers.
According to the source, the girls were treated like real slaves and forced to stay online 12 hours a day, with breaks of only 5 minutes, on a site with over 1,000 followers.
As for the rape charge, investigators claim that sometime between late January and early February 2022, Andrew Tate allegedly met a young woman from the Republic of Moldova. The two supposedly met in London during February and he convinced her that he was determined to marry her.
Subsequently, he allegedly brought her to Romania and lodged her directly in the studio in Pipera, where, after invoking an alleged debt and with the help of one of his trusted women, “by exercising physical violence and mental coercion resulting from intimidation, surveillance and control,” he forced her to do videochat.
In March 2022, the woman was allegedly called by Andrew Tate, known as Cobra, to the Marriot Hotel in the capital, where he allegedly „coerced her, by psychological and verbal pressure, augmented by the entire factual context in which she found herself, to have normal sexual and oral relations with him” and with two other girls who worked for him.
According to sources close to the investigation, there are photographic slides on file showing that, on the date of the alleged rape, the young woman arrived at the hotel half an hour before Andrew Tate, along with the other two „colleagues”.
In addition, there are allegedly transcripts of WhatsApp conversations in which she tells the other two: „ Tonight we have a party. Keep your pants up, girls!”, the message being followed by an emoticon to imply that he is laughing.
As for the incident involving a young woman from the US, which was also the basis of the investigation that led to the arrest of the Tate brothers, the DIICOT prosecutors revealed that, initially she had already met Tristan Tate. The two reportedly met in America at the end of December 2021, after meeting a month earlier through a social networking site.
Subsequently, as in the case of the other victims, the woman came to Romania with a plane ticket paid for by Tristan Tate, whom she believed to be her future husband.
„ (…) he transported her from the USA to Romania and Ilfov County for the purpose of sexual exploitation, by forcing her to perform pornographic acts with a view to producing and disseminating pornographic material, using for this purpose the website …. and by forcing her to perform forced labor, using for this purpose the website …, in order to identify more than 1000 followers”, the reasoning of the Bucharest Court also states.
Andrew and Tristan Tate are accused of „establishing an organized criminal group in 2021 with a view to committing the crime of trafficking in human beings on the territory of Romania and other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom”.
„The victims were then transported and housed in buildings in Ilfov county where they were physically abused and psychologically coerced (through intimidation, constant surveillance, control and the allegation of debts), they were sexually exploited by members of the group by being forced to engage in pornographic acts with a view to producing and disseminating material of such a nature via social media platforms and by being forced to perform forced labor in order to obtain significant financial benefits consisting in sums of money obtained as a result of users accessing the material”, according to the DIICOT.