WHAT BOOK would author Andrew Child take to a desert island?

By Daily Mail Reporter

Updated: 16:49 EDT, 24 August 2023

It all started innocently enough. I watched the testimony of a 19-year-old Californian, Chloe Cole, before a committee of the U.S. Congress last Thursday.

She was giving evidence about the experience she underwent in her transition to becoming a boy and it was pretty harrowing stuff.

Chloe revealed she had been given puberty blockers aged 13 and underwent a double mastectomy aged 15. Now de-transitioning, she fought back the tears as she revealed to the politicians before her that she had scars on her breast, her nipples weeped fluids, she would never be able to breastfeed, she struggled to look at herself in the mirror and when she did she saw a ‘monster’.

I fought to hold back my own tears.

Why had her parents gone along with all this? The doctors prescribing the drugs and proposing the mutilation, she explained, had asked them if they wanted a ‘dead daughter’ or a ‘live trans son’.

I decided to tweet to my 1.2 million followers an excerpt from her testimony, commenting that it was ‘heart-breaking’, ‘barbaric’ and asked: ‘What have we become?’

That’s when the balloon went up.

I’ve never commented publicly before on any of the issues swirling round the transgender debate. Readers of my columns and viewers of my TV shows will know I tend to stick to mainstream politics and economics, my areas of expertise. My tweet was a baptism of fire.

A Cabinet minister texted me: ‘Welcome to the dark side.’ They weren’t wrong. I was quickly denounced as a ‘Terf’.

I’d seen this term used to smear JK Rowling and other critics of the transgender lobby but, I explained, it wasn’t effective abuse against me since I didn’t really know what it meant. Someone helpfully explained that it stood for ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist’ (meaning, I think, advocating feminist rights at the expense of trans rights).

I’ve always regarded myself as something of a feminist, having appointed the first-ever female editor of The Scotsman, for example, and the first female editor of The Sunday Times colour magazine in the days when these things didn’t really happen. But a ‘radical feminist?’ I can’t wait to tell Germaine Greer, I tweeted in jest. In truth, there is nothing funny about the trans debate.

A number of fellow ‘Terfs’ posted tweets welcoming me to the cause but pointing out, correctly, I was something of a johnny-come-lately.

Times columnist Janice Turner said she and other women had been writing about the use of drugs and surgery on transitioning teenagers for at least six years and taking no notice was a lesson for me ‘not to tune out women’.

I replied that it was usually wiser to welcome converts to the cause rather than upbraid them. But I now see that was ungracious. Women like Janice (and it’s nearly always been women) who’ve been in the vanguard of exposing the horrors of this scandal have experienced the vilest abuse — and received precious little support or comfort from the rest of us.

They have been vilified by the more extreme elements in the transgender lobby as ‘hysterical bigots’ and regularly threatened with violence, including rape and murder.

One woman showed me evidence of threats to ‘come to your house’ and ‘rip the nipples off your bare chest’. Another was promised a ‘night of the long knives’. And there’s much worse than this. It’s simply unrepeatable in a newspaper.

It’s not just threats. Women who’ve dared to question the trans consensus have lost their jobs or been sidelined. A senior Arts Council England official was driven to resign (she later won her harassment claim before an employment tribunal).

Journalists, such as Suzanne Moore from the Guardian, have quit after being shunned by colleagues. Even academics, such as Professor Kathleen Stock, have been hounded out of their university posts by aggressive student campaigns.

These injustices happened under my nose. Either I took no notice, or didn’t think it was my fight — when it should be everybody’s fight.

Of course, journalists like me were not entirely unaware of transgender controversies. We watched, shaking our heads, as men who had transitioned to women started winning events in women’s sports.

Lia Thomas, who’d once competed in American university male swimming teams, became one of the most notorious causes celebres as her tall, muscular body towered above women swimmers on the female winner’s podium.

That seemed simply unfair to all the women who’d given up so much of their youth to become champion swimmers.

Then there was the case of Adam Graham, sentenced to eight years for raping two women, but who — between arrest and sentence — decided to transition to a woman and become Isla Bryson.

At one stage it looked like the rapist’s jail-time time would be served in a woman’s prison and that the SNP government in Scotland would uphold that — until there was an outcry and common sense prevailed. That episode contributed to the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon so, as a Scot, it naturally appeared on my radar.

But I didn’t know the half of it. Fortunately, the brave women standing up against extreme transgender ideology did. And with precious little support from the rest of us, they have had their victories.

London’s Tavistock NHS Trust is closing its Gender Identity Development Service, the main English clinic responsible for treating teenagers similar to Chloe Cole.

The use of puberty blockers has been curtailed, which is just as well since, despite claims they’re ‘life-saving’ and ‘reversible’, a study into their use in the NHS concluded they could disrupt the long-term brain development of youngsters.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of disinformation floating around. My attention was brought to a Swedish study which, relying on information stretching back over 50 years, found that less than 3 per cent of individuals who transitioned ever de-transitioned.

But even a cursory look revealed that the study ended in 2010, covered only adults and mainly natal males. So it tells us nothing about the recent explosion of teenagers, mainly girls, seeking to dissociate themselves from the bodies with which they were born.

There is a growing suspicion that many of the young people currently suffering from what’s called gender dysphoria are simply gay and that, if allowed to come to terms with their sexuality with help and counselling, will turn out just fine.

Instead they are being subject to barbarous treatment much like, in more intolerant times, gay people were subjected to electric shock treatment to ‘cure’ them.

If this analysis proves broadly right, we’re living through a medical and societal scandal of massive proportions.

I have merely reached the foothills of all the issues involved in the transgender debate. I now have a new summer reading list whose authors represent a roll call of honour to those who have fought in the trenches, often at great personal cost: Helen Lewis, Julie Bindel, Sarah Ditum, Hannah Barnes, Helen Joyce, Labour MP Rosie Duffield, Hadley Freeman and others too numerous to mention (and, yes, you’ve noticed — there are no men on this list, which only underlines who’s been doing the heavy lifting).

I’m ready for the further abuse that awaits me for siding with such company. Frankly, it’s water off a duck’s back. And it’s never as brutal against men as it is women, which speaks volumes for those dishing out the abuse.

Who cares? If it means I’m a JK Rowling ally and that makes it harder for what happened to Chloe Cole to happen to other young, vulnerable teenagers, then I’m delighted to be a foot soldier in a just cause.

Controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate has been ordered to remain under house arrest in Romania for another 30 days after being charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, a Bucharest court ruled today.

Andrew, 36, and his brother Tristan Tate, 34, who are both dual UK-US nationals, have been at the centre of a lengthy investigation following claims they exploited women for profit.

Earlier this week both men appeared before a judge in the Romanian capital Bucharest where they live, and as he entered court Andrew told MailOnline he ‘believed in God and justice’.

Both deny the charges against them with Andrew, who grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire, insisting the charges are ‘trumped up and part of a conspiracy by the Matrix to target rich, influential men’.

Two women – Luana Radu and Georgiana Nagel – have also been jointly charged with the Tate brothers and they appeared in court alongside them on Wednesday for the 90-minute hearing.

Ahead of the court’s decision on Friday, Andrew posted on his Twitter a dig at diplomats for failing to help him and said: ‘If I was a transsexual the USA embassy would have instantly taken me out of jail and harshly condemned Romania for being transphobic.’

It had been feared that a lightning strike by judges over pensions would delay their appearance, but the case went ahead after it was decided it was of ‘top level priority’.

In their ruling the court said:’ All four defendants will remain under house arrest until further checks but for no longer than 30 days.’

A prosecution source told MailOnline:’ The judge checked the legality and the reliability of the house arrest and decided it was legal.’

After the ruling self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew posted a picture of himself on his Twitter showing him in boxing gloves with the caption:’Pain and suffering for breakfast.’

The brothers were indicted earlier this week by prosecutors in the Romanian capital of Bucharest where they both now live and have been under investigation since last year.

As part of the probe Romania’s DIICOT investigators ordered the seizure of assets from the brother including 15 high value cars, 14 luxury watches and around £440,000 in cryptocurrency.

The brothers live in a high security gated compound in Bucharest and are said to have a £10 million fortune which officials believe to includes money made after forcing women to make sexually explicit videos.

When MailOnline visited the compound on the outskirts of the city, two thick set security guards dressed in black opened the door and said the brothers were ‘unavailable’ and asked us to leave.

Andrew was previously banned from a string of social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.

The DIICOT law enforcement agency in Romania said in a statement after the brothers’ December arrests it had identified victims in the human trafficking case who were allegedly subjected to ‘acts of physical violence and mental coercion’ and sexually exploited by members of the group.

The agency alleged victims were lured with pretenses of ‘love’ and later intimidated, which it dubbed ‘the loverboy method’.

It added: ‘The four defendants instituted a criminal group organised on the territory of Romania but also in other countries such as the United States and Great Britain.’

DIICOT alleged the seven victims it has identified were placed under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into engaging in pornographic acts for the financial gain of the group.

The women are one American and six Romanians whose identities have not been revealed and they are said to be in protective custody.

In April, the Tate brothers won a tribunal appeal to be moved from police custody to house arrest while prosecutors continued to carry out their investigation.

A judge approved their release following four separate rulings to extend the Tate brothers’ stay in prison after they were initially detained in December.

The also extended to the two women who were released into house arrest alongside the brothers.

All four were ordered to stay in the buildings where they live, unless given judicial permission to leave and if convicted they face up to 13 years in jail.

Commenting on the decision Andrew wrote on Twitter: ‘After 176 days of imprisonment, both in the dungeron and in my home – the legal limit of holding a man without charge expired.

‘They instantly charged me – and asked the judge to extend house arrest. The judge has agreed this morning.

‘I remain locked in my house. I have not been free since December of last year.’

While in another rant minutes later he added:’ Imagine that I was held until the absolute limit of jail conditions without charge, down to the last few hours.

‘If they had a case, why wait so long. Then charged last second with who knows what – and all of the arrest conditions extended indefinitely. Forever jail.’

Earlier this month, a fourth British woman claimed she she was victim of sexual assault by the influencer, alleging the he choked her until she lost consciousness.

The 30-year-old has joined a civil claim for damages against Tate, after three other women said in April that they intended to begin proceedings.

A dual citizen of the United States and Britain, former kickboxer Andrew Tate moved to Romania years ago, after first starting a webcam business in the UK.

In 2016, Tate appeared on the ‘Big Brother’ reality television show in Britain but was removed after a video emerged showing him attacking a woman.

He then turned to social media platforms to promote his divisive views. He currently has 6.9 million followers on Twitter.

Giving tips on how to be successful, along with misogynistic and sometimes violent maxims, his videos have made him one of the world’s best-known influencers.

‘I am absolutely sexist, and I’m absolutely a misogynist,’ Tate said in a 2021 interview.

Last week, a British law firm served Andrew Tate with legal papers with four women threatening him with a lawsuit in the English courts over allegations of sexual assault.

A statement from the law firm described the women’s allegations ‘including violent rapes, serious physical assault, and controlling and coercive behaviour.’

Andrew Tate has ‘categorically denied’ claims of sexual violence made by four British women who are suing him for damages related to alleged physical assaults.

Last Wednesday, it emerged that a fourth British woman had accused the social media influencer of choking her until she lost consciousness before raping her when she was a 20-year-old university student.

The former kickboxer was served with the legal papers by lawyers representing the four alleged victims in person at his address in Bucharest, Romania, today where he is currently on house arrest with his brother Tristan on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking, which he denies.

It comes less than 24 hours after Romanian prosecutors also announced the misogynistic influencer, his brother and two other female Romanian suspects, Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel, are now being investigated for more serious human trafficking charges. 

In a strongly worded statement after being served the legal papers by lawyers from McCue Jury & Partners, Tate’s team vehemently denied the accusations made by the four women and dismissed the alleged victims as ‘opportunistic’. 

A spokesperson for Tate said: ‘Andrew Tate categorically denies the veracity of the accusations brought by the lawyers of the anonymous women in the UK. 

‘Considering the collective approach of the four women, and the channels chosen for communications, the opportunistic character of this endeavour becomes obvious, as justice is sought in the court, not in the press. 

‘Despite these alleged events taking place in 2014, no legal action has been taken to cover the alleged damages suffered and no proof of such damages has been brought forward until after Andrew became an international public figure.’

The fourth woman, now aged 30, to accuse Tate of sexual violence has joined three other British woman aged in their late 20s and early 30s as they pursue civil claims for damages against Tate.

They all say they were victims of sexual violence by Tate between 2013 and 2016, when he lived in the UK. The three women launched a civil claim raising money for the case on a crowdfunding page.

Two of them were webcam models in his internet sex business, while the other had a personal relationship with him. 

The latest woman to come forward told BBC Newsnight that she had consensual sex with Tate after a night out in his home town of Luton in 2014. But she said this became violent when he choked her, and when she awoke he was still having sex with her, which she did not consent to. 

The woman said that this was her second encounter with Tate. A few months earlier they had consensual sex.

She said while they were having sex on their second encounter, Tate put his hand on her throat and ‘strangled me’ until she passed out – and that when she came round ‘it was a bit confusing at first’, and he was ‘still having sex with me’.

The woman also said she was subjected to violent threats by Tate, including one to kill her, adding: ‘He kept saying: “I own you, you belong to me”.

‘All throughout the night he was being fairly aggressive and saying horrible things.’

A spokesman for Tate insisted that all sexual acts he had been involved in had been consensual – and that he does not condone violence towards women.

The woman did not report the incident to police at the time, saying she only realised she had been sexually assaulted about six years later when she described what had happened to her friends. 

The lawyer for the original three women, Matt Jury, said in April when their claim was first announced: ‘Their allegations include rape, sexual and physical assaults, including holding guns to women’s heads, strangulations including with belts, allegations of the most awful behaviour towards women.’

In a heated interview with BBC News last Thursday, Tate insisted he will be cleared of accusations of organised crime and human trafficking.

The 36-year-old British-US citizen said he is ‘absolutely and utterly sure’ he is innocent and instead said he is a ‘force for good in the world’ and a ‘positive influence’.

In the interview in his home in Romania, he said: ‘We have an open criminal investigation, I am absolutely and utterly sure I’ll be found innocent.

‘I know the case better than you, I know it intimately and you don’t, I have seen all the criminal files and the evidence against me and you haven’t, I know the truth of what happened and you don’t.

‘And I’m telling you absolutely and utterly, I’ve never hurt anybody, that the case that’s been put against me is completely and utterly fabricated and I’m never gonna be found guilty of anything.’

A number of campaign groups have said Tate’s views make him a danger to young men and boys who see his content online, while the National Education Union’s (NEU) annual conference heard pupils are developing misogynistic views because of him.

Schools have reported male pupils sexually harassing their female classmates in person and online, including by demanding they send sexually explicit images and videos.

Told about this, he responded: ‘That’s very upsetting and the reason that’s very upsetting is because I know that’s not true, I’m genuinely a good person. I believe my impact on the world is positive.’ 

Tate, who has lived in Romania since 2017, has been banned from various social media platforms for violating their policies, including on hate speech stemming from his misogynistic and derogatory views of women. 

Under Romanian legislation, prosecutors have filed charges against Tate, his brother and the two female suspects, but the case is under investigation and has not yet gone to trial. Prosecutors are expected to commit them for trial later in June. 

The four were held in police custody from December 29 until March 31, when a Bucharest court placed them under house arrest. 

Under Romanian law, trafficking of adults carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. 

NRL Immortal Andrew Johns has dramatically quit the SEN radio network as the fallout from his on-air feud with brother Matthew Johns continues to fester.

The footy siblings – who often don’t see eye to eye – have failed to patch up their differences following a heated on-air debate ahead of the State of Origin series opener last month.

Fox Sports identity Matthew Johns, who hosts the Morning Glory program each Friday, praised the coaching abilities of Queensland mentor Billy Slater, which got under his younger brother’s skin.

Andrew Johns is also a member of the NSW Blues coaching staff.

SEN station boss Craig Hutchison was confident the siblings would soon be on the same page – possibly once the Origin series is finished – but it is believed a fired up Andrew Johns has declared he won’t be back on the airwaves in 2023.

On June 9 – for the second successive week – Andrew failed to show at SEN’s Walker St studios in North Sydney.

Matthew Johns stated in the lead up ‘I’m just going to leave the studio door open,’ and if ‘he walks through the doors at one minute to nine then he does, if he doesn’t we will just have to make do.’

Johns and respected sports journalist Andrew Webster then failed to address the elephant in the room.

Matthew’s comments on Slater incensed young brother Andrew, who is as passionate as they come when it comes to the Blues.

‘Mate, I’m sick of you rapping Queensland, that’s what I’m sick of,’ Andrew, who is widely regarded as the Blues’ best ever player, fumed on live radio last month.

‘Put your Maroon jersey on, you should have some at home.

‘Just because you played four games and lost all four doesn’t mean you need to s**t bag NSW.’ 

Earlier this month, Matthew Johns confirmed the former NSW Blues halfback still wasn’t prepared to smoke the peace pipe.

‘Houston we have a problem, it’s official my brother is completely off me,’ Matty told listeners.

‘There were rumours he might not come. I thought the last three weeks of him not returning phone calls was laziness.

‘He is off me. This is nothing new for me and Joey (Andrew). We were forced to share a bedroom for 19 years.

‘We’ve had a fill of each other. Every six months we have a blue like this.’

While Matthew’s Origin career was relatively short, his brother played 23 times for the Blues, including a legendary man-of-the-match performance in Game Two of the 2005 series.

The pair have often clashed over the years, with most of their run-ins good natured.

Last July, Matthew used a radio debate about State of Origin as an opportunity to take a savage swipe at his brother over his love life.

The NSW side is known for dropping stars from their team with regularity – often when fans think they don’t deserve to be shown the door – whereas Queensland are regarded as showing more loyalty to their players.

Matty used Andrew – who is in his third long-term relationship – to sum up the Blues’ selection process.

‘It’s very NSW. I want people to know….be extremely concerned. Don’t marry anyone from NSW because we fall in love with new acquaintances very easily,’ he said on SEN.

‘What you do, is you just get rid of them. Just bring someone else in.

‘I mean, the best example is our best ever player, Andrew Johns, I think he’s onto his third wife.’

Andrew Tate today blasted the BBC over their attempts to ‘vilify’ him after he gave the broadcaster his first interview since being detained over sex trafficking charges.

In a combative interview, Tate repeatedly dismissed the BBC’s questions about allegations of rape, human trafficking and exploitation of women – and instead demanded to ask his own questions.

When quizzed about a testimony from a woman who has accused Tate of rape and exploitation, the influencer responded by asking his own question and telling the BBC journalist: ‘You’re not the boss here because I’ve allowed you into my house.’

Following the interview, which collapsed after Tate, 36, said he was doing the BBC a ‘favour’ by speaking to the broadcaster, the self-professed misogynist launched a scathing attack on the broadcaster.

He tweeted: ‘The mainstream media which vilify me, beg me for interviews under the guise of balanced journalism. The Matrix is desperate.’ 

Tate claimed that whilst he had been vilified, the BBC was not similarly outraged when the broadcaster’s presenters Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris were grooming and raping girls.

‘Where was the BBC’s outrage when Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris were grooming and raping and molesting young girls for decades?’

Savile, who was one of Britain’s biggest television stars before his death in 2011, molested at least 72 children, some as young as eight, over a four-decade campaign of abuse. And Harris was jailed over 12 indecent assaults against four underage girls.

Tate is currently under house arrest in Romania with his brother Tristan over allegations of human trafficking, rape and forming an organising a crime group to exploit victims.

In a bizarre series of tweets, Tate ranted: ‘I harbour no hard feelings against the BBC or any journalist who attempts to lie about me. The truth of my message is known and good will continue to spread. Tolerance and love for you all.’ 

In another tweet, Tate said: ‘The level of stress and pressure I operate under would be too much 99.99% of men. They truly want me dead. But I persist, day after day. No alcohol. No drugs. No therapy. Simply wake up. Pray. Then get to work. Allah is the best of planners.’ 

In yet another tweet from today, Tate claimed he was a ‘political prisoner’ who had been ‘left to rot’.

He added: ‘England will now attempt to put me in jail. Matrix attacks via the ‘justice’ system incoming.’

The influencer has been accused of spreading misogynistic ‘rape culture’ content to audiences as young as 13 on TikTok, with Tate speaking about attacking a woman if she accused him of cheating. 

Tate is currently under house arrest in Romania over allegations he recruited young women and forced them to create online pornographic content.

When asked about the allegations made against him, Tate told the BBC in the heated interview: ‘I know the case intimately and you don’t. I have seen all the criminal files and the evidence against me and you haven’t. 

‘I know the truth of what happened and you don’t. And I’m telling you absolutely and utterly, I’ve never hurt anybody, that the case that’s been put against me is completely and utterly fabricated and I’m never going to be found guilty of anything.’

Tate then dismissed the testimonies of individual women who have accused the influencer of rape and exploitation. One British woman, referred to as Sophie to protect her identity, has claimed Tate slapped and strangled her to the point of passing out ‘during rough sex’. 

Sophie told the BBC in February Tate had charmed her at first and encouraged her to work for his webcam business before becoming controlling and coercive.

When asked about Sophie’s testimony, Tate claimed, without providing evidence, that she did not exist and instead kept asking the BBC reporter questions instead of answering her own. 

‘I’ve asked you a question and I’ve allowed you into my house,’ Tate said, to which the BBC reporter responded: ‘I am asking you a question. You get to decide the answers.’ 

But Tate hit back and said: ‘No we are equal here. I’ve allowed you into my house. You don’t come here with a position of authority. I’m doing you the favour as legacy media, giving you relevance, by speaking to you. 

‘And I’m telling you now, this Sophie, which the BBC has invented, who has no face. Nobody knows who she is. I know.’

Prosecutors have said the Tate brothers recruited their victims by seducing them and falsely claiming to want a relationship or marriage.

The victims were then taken to properties on the outskirts of the capital, Bucharest, and coerced to produce pornographic content for social media sites that generated large financial gain, prosecutors say.

Tate’s rise to fame in recent years has been linked to the proliferation of British teenagers using the Chinese video sharing platform TikTok.

Tate, who has told rape victims to ‘bear responsibility’ for the abuse, said in one video that he would attack a woman if she accused him of cheating.

When asked if a woman accused him of cheating and came at him with a machete, Tate said: ‘It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b****.’

Leading domestic abuse charities have warned such content is extremely misogynistic and has the potential to radicalise men and young boys to bring harm to women.

When asked about this during the BBC interview, Tate said the accusations were ‘absolute garbage’. 

‘That’s very upsetting and the reason that’s very upsetting is because I know that’s not true, I’m genuinely a good person. I believe my impact on the world is positive,’ Tate claimed. 

The former kickboxer added: ‘I preach hard work, discipline, I’m an athlete, I preach anti-drug, I preach religion, I preach no alcohol, I preach no knife crime, every single problem with modern society I’m against.

‘I’m teaching young men to be disciplined, to be diligent, to listen, to train, to work hard, to be exactly like me.

‘And I’m saying that if men grew up like me which are hardworking and diligent, with emotional control and stoic, we’re gonna have a better society, not a worse society.

‘To sit here and say that schools in England, which is a failing nation, which has knife crime going through the roof, violence going through the roof, men’s mental health going through the roof, and they’re going to all blame me because I appeared on the internet is disingenuous.’

Tate was arrested on December 29 in Bucharest along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group to exploit victims.

The notorious misogynist spent three months in prison before being put under house arrest last month after winning an appeal against a judge’s decision to extend his time in jail for a fourth time.

Tate and Tristan moved into a converted warehouse in Romania in 2017, which they staffed with armed guards.

At their safehouse on the outskirts of Bucharest, the Tate brothers had a video chat studio where several women were found during a police raid in April 2022. 

Romanian anti-organized crime agency DIICOT said in a statement after the December arrests that it had identified six victims in the human trafficking case who were allegedly subjected to ‘acts of physical violence and mental coercion’ and sexually exploited by members of the alleged crime group.

The agency said victims were lured with pretenses of love and later intimidated, placed under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into engaging in pornographic acts for the financial gain of the crime group.

In January, Romanian authorities descended on a compound near Bucharest linked with the Tate brothers and towed away a fleet of luxury cars that included a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari and a Porsche. They reported seizing assets worth an estimated $3.9 million. 

Prosecutors have said that if they can prove the cars’ owners gained money through illicit activities such as human trafficking, the assets would be used to cover the expenses of the investigation and to compensate victims. Tate also unsuccessfully appealed the asset seizure. 

Tate is also accused of raping a Moldovan woman, who he alleges followed him from London, in March 2022, which he categorically denies. 

In January, he told the Bucharest Court of Appeal that the alleged victim moved to Romania with him voluntarily in November 2021.

Tate claimed she filed a rape allegation nearly six months later when he refused to give her money to buy a house and become a TikTok star. 

And in April, it emerged that Tate is reportedly facing the possibility of being sued by three British women who claimed he sexually abused them.

The legal team who are putting the allegations together, which it will make clear once they have the money to bring civil action against Tate in the High Court.

The women, now aged in their late 20s and early 30s, reportedly claim that Tate, 36, sexually abused them between 2013 and 2016, as the self-described misogynist ran an online sex firm from Luton, Bedfordshire.

An investigation by British police forces into complaints made by two women at the time resulted in no charges being brought against Tate, who repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

The British women looking to bring the claim against Tate say that they have suffered personal injury and psychiatric harm after alleged violent sexual and physical assaults in the UK.

They are being represented by law firm McCue Jury & Partners. 

Tate’s views on women, masculinity and entrepreneurship, voiced in podcasts and shared online, became popular in 2022 as they were shared in short clips around social media.

He was ultimately banned from various platforms for misogyny and hate speech.   

Tate has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence and alleged their case is a ‘political’ conspiracy designed to silence him. 

 BOOK OF THE WEEK

Sleeping on Islands: A Life in Poetry 

by Andrew Motion (Faber £20, 320pp)

It’s not necessarily quite what you want to hear if you’re the Poet Laureate, and especially not from your employer. 

‘I’m afraid I don’t read much poetry,’ says the Queen, when Andrew Motion has his first audience with her.

But she has a good excuse. ‘I have so many of those blessed red boxes to read — my government keeps sending them.’

Meanwhile, as former laureate Ted Hughes has just died, Motion wants to make sure the Queen knows that they were friends, though he recognises that the great Hughes is an impossibly hard act to follow. 

He has also heard on the grapevine that the Queen Mother and Prince Charles had been very friendly with him, and it was rumoured that Hughes and the Queen Mother went fishing together.

‘Oh yes,’ the Queen tells him. ‘I believe that Ted Hughes and my mother did see quite a bit of each other. Actually, I’d like to have a poet laureate who paid attention to me.’

Later, he and his then wife, Jan, are invited by Prince Charles for a weekend in Sandringham. 

He is determined not to feel his head is turned, but after being picked up at King’s Lynn station and driven very fast through the lanes of Norfolk, he senses he is ‘disappearing into a different time world where the normal rules of life no longer obtained’. Who else was there? ‘Luvvies and their partners,’ he tells us.

There’s Jeremy Irons and his wife, Sinead Cusack, Jools Holland, Robert Harris, Richard E. Grant and his (late) wife Joan Washington, Mario Testino and ‘of course’ Stephen Fry. 

Prince Charles and Camilla (not yet the Duchess of Cornwall) affably wander round dishing out pints of gin and making everyone welcome.

Motion is very struck by the future King. ‘He was more earnest: asking questions, engaged, implausibly modest and surprisingly candid’ — almost immediately mentioning how unhappy he had been as a child.

After the reception they are shown up to their bedroom where their cases have been unpacked and their clothes for dinner pressed and laid out on the bed by some kindly but invisible hand.

Downstairs the table is magnificent, ‘buried by vast flower decorations, set in a silver sea of salvers, figurines, jugs, bowls, candlesticks and candelabras’.

The next day, the house party is taken to a lavish picnic in a handsome log cabin not too far away. 

On the ground there are thousands of toads mating, some in couples, most in gangs. ‘What do you think would happen if I kissed one?’ Jan asks the future King. ‘Then there would be a surfeit of princes,’ he rather wittily replies.

So there are considerable upsides to being Poet Laureate. You get to meet almost everybody and you hang out with royalty. On the downside you have to churn out poems to order.

Motion is much happier when he goes off piste, wanting to make poetry part of everyday life: the foot-and-mouth outbreak, bullying, the war in Iraq, the Paddington train crash.

Now Motion, for years one of the great and the good of British letters, has written an absorbing memoir about his life, the people in it and his passion for poetry. 

But it’s not a bad career anyway: an award-winning biographer, notably of Philip Larkin, his hero, and John Keats; one time head of creative writing at the University of East Anglia; editor of the Poetry Review; editorial director at Chatto; founder of the Poetry Archive; head of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. You can’t fault him for effort.

Obsessed with writing and writers, and in a fairly clear-eyed and ruthless drive to the top, he makes sure he meets almost everybody who matters in the post-war literary world. W. H. Auden is returning to Oxford where Motion, who is beginning to gain a reputation as a published poet, is studying. 

Getting to know Auden would be an endorsement: ‘My need for a mentor coincided with my need for approbation, the more distinguished the mentor, the more valuable the approbation.’

At dinner at Christ Church, Auden suggests Motion sits next to him. That’s because no one else wants to: Auden is a confused mess, shuffling around in slippers, laying down the law, repeating himself and getting very drunk. The famous face ‘as fissured as a limestone pavement’.

Auden reads Motion’s poems, and proffers advice when he visits his cottage. On the wall is a David Hockney etching of a naked boy: ‘What would you like?’ asks Auden. Was he being propositioned? Martini, replies Motion.

At a reading in London by Hughes and Seamus Heaney, he observes the power of poetry —well poets, certainly — in action. As the audience take their books up to be signed, he sees that some, especially the women, seemed to curl up against Hughes while he writes their names.

Literary figures flit eagerly through the pages: here is Kingsley Amis behaving appallingly at a lunch before Larkin’s funeral, disdaining the food and asking for drinks he knows the hosts won’t have. 

Here’s Sir Antony Sher at dinner, and even Tony Blair in his shirtsleeves breezily greeting Motion at No 10. ‘Ello’, he says, dropping the ‘h’ as if they were old pals from a rock band.

But it is Larkin, who asks Motion to act as his literary executor, who dominates the middle section of this book. Motion takes a job at Hull University, where Larkin was the librarian until his death. 

But he is now an older figure, rumpled, drinking a few pints at lunchtime. ‘He’s the best poet alive and famous for being a recluse but here I am seeing him as though he has just got out of bed.’

Motion has a curiously rough-and-ready attitude to the (many) women in his life, who come and go with regularity. His first wife, Joanna, he meets as a student; his second is Jan, a literary editor. 

That relationship ends eventually. ‘I moved into a flat round the corner and five years after that Jan and I got divorced’.

He meets his latest wife at a reading in upstate New York. She is a Korean interpreter and artist called Kyeong-Soo Kim: ‘Very beautiful black hair, a very beautiful concentrating face, a very cool tweed trouser suit, and very funky black boots with a rib on the toecap . . . and (her) voice surprisingly deep and commanding.’ 

It sounds like love and, sure enough, a year later Kyeong-Soo leaves her apartment in Brooklyn and moves to London to live with Motion.

He accepts a job teaching at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the U.S. He remembers what T. S. Eliot had said: ‘Old men ought to be explorers.’ He was taking his advice: his decision was a vote for adventure.

And the world of American verse will be a welcome change. The British literary world he sees is like ‘a walled town where everyone knew or recognised everyone else . . . a permanent battle for survival, gossiping and grudging, competing and complaining’. No wonder he chose Baltimore.

Andrew Tate has blasted a Coronation Road star and known as him a ‘pu**y’ after he apologised for ‘liking’ a few of the misogynistic influencer’s posts on Twitter.

Adam Hussain, who’s greatest know for portraying Aadi Alahan on the ITV cleaning soap, issued the apology earlier this week saying he ‘wasn’t conscious’ of Tate’s controversial background when he ‘appreciated’ a few of the posts.

He added that he would by no means ‘endorse’ any such views in an announcement launched after his interplay with the posts on the social media platform have been reported on.

However Tate – who has over six million followers – hit again on Friday. Posting a screenshot of an article from Digital Spy overlaying Hussain’s apology, he wrote: ‘Pu**y.’

In his sometimes weird fashion, the 36-year-old added in a follow-up Tweet: ‘I train males to turn out to be filthy wealthy. You may be an actor – however they nonetheless have you ever by the balls.

‘He agrees with me, however backtracks like ickle pu**ybowy or he will get FIRED. Cash is ULTRA vital to flee the slave thoughts.’ He then posted a hyperlink to his web site.

Tate, a former kick boxer, has been accused of spreading misogynistic ‘rape tradition’ content material to audiences as younger as 13 on TikTok and different social media. In a single case, Tate spoke about attacking a girl if she ever accused him of dishonest.

He’s additionally at present being investigated in Romania alongside together with his brother Tristan over the suspected human trafficking, rape and exploitation of girls. He was launched from jail in March, however stays beneath home arrest pending additional investigation.

Hussain stated he issued the apology having not realised Tate’s background when he first clicked ‘like’ (sometimes utilized by folks to indicate their appreciation for a Tweet).

‘I am actually sorry if my ‘liking’ of those tweets has prompted any offence to our viewers and my colleagues,’ he wrote.

In response to The Solar, who first reported on Hussain’s interplay, the Corrie actor had been partaking with the disgraced influencer and his brother nearly each day.

The publication stated he had appreciated a ‘staggering’ variety of Tate’s posts.

Considered one of Tate’s submit that was initially appreciated by Hussain the influencer write: ‘The Reality Will Prevail.’ One other stated: ’30 extra days on home arrest. 30 extra days supressed. I have never been free for a single day this 12 months. The battle rages towards Shaitan.’

One other noticed Tate write: ‘Any man whos afraid to professionally struggle is not allowed to debate mindset on the timeline [sic].’

Tate has shared together with his followers his perception that he’s the goal of some type of world conspiracy to maintain him and different like-minded folks in test.

He usually refers to a conspiracy involving the idea of ‘The Matrix’ as a worldwide conspiracy making an attempt to regulate the world. He frames himself as being somebody who will assist folks break freed from this ‘management’.

He has even prompt he shall be assassinated as a part of this world plot, and in a string of deleted Tweets on Thursday claimed he had been poisoned.

There isn’t any such proof such a conspiracy exists.

The Tate brothers are nonetheless ready to study whether or not Romanian prosecutors will ship their case to trial.

Beneath Romanian laws, prosecutors have filed prices towards the 4 suspects, however the case is beneath investigation and has not gone to trial. 

Andrew, Tristan and two Romanian feminine suspects are beneath home arrest pending a legal investigation for suspected human trafficking, rape and forming a legal gang to sexually exploit girls, accusations they’ve denied. 

The Tates, Georgiana Naghel and Luana Radu have been held in police custody from December 29 till March 31 when a Bucharest courtroom positioned them beneath home arrest. Prosecutors have till June to ship the case to trial. 

On Monday, Romania’s DIICOT anti-organised crime prosecuting unit notified Tristan Tate that an extra cost of inciting others to violence was added to his identify, DIICOT spokesperson Ramona Bolla advised Reuters.

Romanian prosecutors introduced the extra cost on Tuesday.

The cost is believed to narrate to an alleged incident involving Naghel inflicting ache on one other girl in 2021, in line with Romanian media outlet Gandul. 

Naghel reportedly compelled an alleged sufferer to boost her proper hand when she knew that the lady had just lately undergone breast augmentation surgical procedure and that such a motion could be painful. 

Afterwards, Naghel allegedly advised Tristan about what occurred and he laughed.

However Tristan’s spokesperson questioned how the influencer incited the violence when the alleged incident occurred earlier than he turned conscious of it. 

Tristan denies any wrongdoing. On Twitter, he stated prosecutors have been making up new prices with out proof.

Their spokesperson added that the alleged incident was introduced earlier than the police on the time however they dismissed it and didn’t examine it additional. 

The DIICOT spokesperson in the meantime stated the prosecutors have been additionally wanting into accusations of cash laundering, however had not issued any associated prices.