Andrew Tate’s accuser tells her story: ‘When I came round… he was still having sex with me’

The act this 30-year-old woman is describing, if accurate, would amount to rape. 

The sex she details having with the man in her bed had long since stopped being ­consensual, because, as she points out: ‘It can’t be consensual if you are unconscious, can it?’

She struggles a little to explain what it feels like to lose ­consciousness as you are being strangled. Her account drifts in and out of the past and present tenses as she describes the ­closest thing to it she had previously experienced.

‘The only thing like it that I’d felt before was when I had an anaesthetic, that slipping away, but this was different. There was a panic about it. I was gasping for air. His hand was around my neck. It hurt. I was aware of pressure. I couldn’t breathe. 

‘I was struggling to get air. I knew what was ­happening — he was choking me. There was a tussle. I would have been trying to get his hand off my neck, I was pushing back but he is quite a big guy.

Evie has became the fourth British woman to make serious accusations of sexual violence against Andrew Tate, the controversial TikTok and ­Instagram influencer

U.S.-born Tate, who grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire, was arrested in Romania last year, accused of human trafficking and rape

‘It happened quite fast.’

She does not know how long she was ‘out’ for, but when she regained consciousness she was disorientated and confused. She didn’t immediately grasp, she claims, what was happening.

‘When I came round, I wasn’t aware of where I was. It was dark. Then I realised he was still having sex with me.’

She can’t, in all honesty, recall pushing her attacker (not that she uses that word) off. ‘I was just lying there, waiting for him to ­finish,’ she says. When he did, they lay there. She was silent. He was not.

‘He started saying things, ­controlling things, like I belonged to him now, that he owned me, wanted to kill me.

‘We didn’t have sex again that night, but he stayed for the rest of the night. I didn’t say anything, but I was terrified. This was an angry person. I didn’t want to p*** him off. I thought ‘he can do whatever he wants here’.’

As you lay there, in the dark, did you at any point think: ‘I have just been raped’, I ask?

‘No. I knew he could have killed me. I felt the danger. I knew it was horrible. But I never thought ‘rape’. I don’t think I thought that for a very long time after.’

Are we talking days after? Months? Years? ‘Years,’ she says. ‘When I thought of that word — rape — I thought of someone walking home late at night and being grabbed by some random guy. I didn’t see what had ­happened to me as rape. I do now.’

This young woman — whom we’ll call Evie — has asked not to be identified, but now Evie has become the fourth British woman to make serious accusations of sexual violence against Andrew Tate, the controversial TikTok and ­Instagram influencer and self-styled guru to a ­generation of teenage boys.

U.S.-born Tate, who grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire, was arrested in Romania last year, accused of human trafficking and rape. Prosecutors claim that while building his global ’empire’, Tate and his brother Tristan held women against their will in a so-called compound in Bucharest, manipulating them into working in adult entertainment chat rooms.

Last month, however, lawyers acting for three British women, in their late 20s and early 30s, announced they were pursuing a separate civil claim for damages against Tate, alleging offences that took place between 2013 and 2016, while Tate was living in the UK and just before he appeared on TV reality show Big Brother.

(He was removed from the show when a video of him apparently beating a woman with a belt came to light. The matter was ­investigated but no charges brought after both parties said the ­incident was consensual.)

The law firm McCue Jury & ­Partners said the aim of the law suit was to seek ‘justice, accountability, and compensation for Tate’s victims’, as well as to push for a UK criminal investigation.

Earlier this week Matthew Jury, a managing partner in the firm, hand-delivered a formal letter of claim on behalf of the four women, including Evie, to Tate’s compound in Romania.

In February, one woman, whom the BBC called Sophie, told how Tate encouraged her to work for his webcam company, before becoming controlling and violent.

U.S.-born Tate was arrested in Romania last year, accused of human trafficking and rape (pictured in the days before his arrest) just days after making strange videos attacking Greta Thunberg 

Although she was in a consensual relationship with Tate the sex between them did become violent, against her wishes. ‘That’s obviously something he is into,’ she said, telling the BBC how she had passed out in bed, while being strangled during violent sex.

Last week Evie joined the others, claiming to have been a victim in 2014 of Tate’s misogyny and desire to dominate women. In this interview, given in the presence of her lawyer, she tells me she had never met the other women, ‘but was struck by how similar elements of their stories were to mine.

‘The patterns of [his] behaviour were the same. It was the reference to being strangled that made me think I had to come forward. I knew I had to say something about what had happened to me.’

If her story is accurate — and her lawyers claim there are three ­witnesses who heard it a decade ago, and who are willing to testify in court — this is an ­extraordinarily brave thing to do.

The brutality of the alleged attack on Evie, she claims, left her with burst blood vessels in one eye, due to the pressure of being choked. 

‘The white of one eye had gone completely red. He could have killed me.’

For years, she simply wanted to forget that she had ever met Andrew Tate. She blamed herself for getting into bed with him, and simply shuddered at ‘how horrible it all was’.

Why has she come forward now, a decade on?

Firstly, she says, she is older and wiser. ‘And I understand more about what consent is.’ 

She is also horrified that the man she claims raped and choked her has gone on to become a ­global superstar, even a role model to a generation.

‘My friend is a teacher,’ she reveals. ‘She told me that in school they had an exercise where the kids had to say who their heroes were, and a lot of the boys said it was him. That is quite scary.’

Although her account today is matter of fact, and she comes across as confident, she says ‘yes, I think so’ when I ask if she is still scared of Andrew Tate. ‘He is quite intimidating,’ she points out.

Perhaps she is more scared of his followers, though, some of whom are still fanatical in their support of this man. Although he has been banned by the big social media providers, his followers have not been.

‘His fans are a bit crazy. They are so, what is the word . . . dedicated. I don’t want to be outed online by them.’

Evie was a 20-year-old student when she met Tate — attractive, charming, if a little arrogant — in a Luton bar in 2014. We have agreed not to give too much information about the circumstances, but can say that she was with a friend who knew his brother Tristan.

‘While she chatted to Tristan, I was left with Andrew,’ she says.

Tate, a 6ft 3in former kickbox champion, would have been in peak physical fitness at this time, and she remembers his swagger. ‘He was probably quite arrogant, but that sort of confidence can be attractive, can’t it?’

The attraction was clearly mutual and they ended up leaving together and going to the house where he lived. She cannot recall much of the sex that ­followed, only that it was ­’straightforward’. ‘There was nothing crazy, no aggression. It was just a normal one-night stand.’

They swapped numbers and some texts over the following weeks. A few months later, Tate ­contacted her, ­suggesting he came around after he finished a ­nightshift at the club where he worked as a bouncer. She agreed.

He arrived and later that evening they had sex — sex that so quickly turned violent. She confirms that she had never experienced being choked during sex before. There was no prior ­discussion about it? 

Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate are escorted by police officers outside the headquarters of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism in Bucharest (DIICOT) after being arrested on December 29

The Tate brothers (seen handcuffed together), Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel (right) arrive at the Bucharest Court of Appeal on February 27

‘No, none.’ And no shock on his part ­afterwards, or admission that things had gone a little too far? ‘No,’ she says, adamant.

What is almost more shocking than her account of this violent sex is her ­description of what ­happened the next morning. A ­flatmate was there, she says, when she emerged from the bedroom with her ­bloodshot eye.

Once Tate had left, she revealed exactly what had happened — but not in a way that had her flatmates ­immediately ­urging her to call the police. Nor was she so ashamed that she played it down.

‘I just told people — my ­flatmates, my friends in Luton who knew him. I wasn’t worried to tell people. I didn’t see it, at the time, as really, really bad.’

Even though what she is ­describing now is rape? ‘Yes, and I know that now,’ she says. ‘At the time, I blamed myself. How could it be rape, if I had ­consented at the start of the sex?’ 

Evie doesn’t make any claims about her life having been ruined by this alleged assault. In the nine years since, she has gone on to have relationships.

She has a good job, too, ‘although recently, in the last few weeks, it has affected my work. I’ve probably taken my eye off the ball because it has been hard. Maybe it has affected me in ways I don’t realise, though. I don’t know.’

What happened to her may have remained just a horrible ­encounter, had it not been for the fact that Andrew Tate went on to build an empire on his overtly macho bravado.

Evie says she barely thought about Tate until 2020, when she became aware that he was now a global influencer, with an audience of millions.

‘It was in lockdown, in 2020, and he was kind of everywhere,’ she remembers. ‘His videos were all over Instagram and TikTok. He was unavoidable. ‘

His teenage male fans loved Andrew Tate, regarding him as some sort of Messiah who could bring them riches, sports cars — and the sort of success with women he had. They subscribed to his online channels, lapped up his overt misogynistic rants and accepted his claims — reiterated to this day — that he was a champion of ­masculinity rather than a hater of women.

Even as the police were ­investigating him in Romania (where he is still under house arrest, but has not been charged with any crime), he was presenting himself as a victim.

His interview with BBC News this month — one of the few ­interviews he has granted — dripped with aggression.

In it, Tate claimed the BBC had ‘invented’ testimony, and he tried to present himself as a true leader.

‘I genuinely am a force for good in the world. You may not ­understand that yet, but you will eventually,’ he said. ‘And I ­genuinely believe I am acting under the instruction of God to do good things, and I want to make the world a ­better place.’

Evie is incredulous at this and I ask her if she feels guilty that she did not come ­forward ­earlier, that she missed an opportunity to alter the entire trajectory of Andrew Tate’s life and those he has influenced?

Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan (pictured together outside court in Romania on April 21) are currently under house arrest over sex trafficking allegations

Pictured: Andrew Tate leaves the Bucharest Court where the rights and liberties judge extended his house arrest for another 30 days on 19 May 

Former police officer Luana Radu (left) and Georgiana Naghel (right) are suspected of assisting the Tate brothers in the crimes they are under investigation for

‘I wouldn’t like to think of it like that,’ she says. ‘That is quite horrible.

‘What I can say is that if it ­happened to me now, to the ­person I am today, I would go to the police straight away.’

There is still no criminal investigation in the UK, but Matthew Jury, from Evie’s legal team, says he hopes there will be and that civil ­proceedings against Tate will ‘help put an end to Tate’s ­manipulation of boys and disillusioned young men by showing them that his actions have consequences’.

The four alleged victims in the UK are seeking ­donations for the ­proceedings via CrowdJustice — the crowdfunding site for legal action.

But a ­spokesperson for Tate said: ‘Andrew Tate ­vehemently denies these accusations and does not condone ­violence of any kind towards women. All sexual acts that Andrew has partaken in have been consensual and agreed upon before by both parties.

‘Andrew strongly encourages women who have experienced assault, in any form, to report it to the relevant authorities. He is ­saddened that a few women who he has allegedly spent time with nearly a decade ago have decided to try and take advantage of his current situation.’

Not true, says Evie. ‘This is just about telling the truth about what he did, about how he needs to control women and dominate them.’

Does she want to face him, one day, across a courtroom?

‘No, I wouldn’t choose to see him again. I’d rather not. But if I had to, I would.’