An American woman accused the online influencers Tristan and Andrew Tate in a lawsuit on Monday of luring her to Romania, conspiring to coerce her into sex work and defaming her after she gave testimony to the Romanian authorities.
The civil complaint, the first suit filed in the United States against the Tate brothers, includes details about the accusations that led to their arrest in Romania in 2022, some of which have been kept confidential. The brothers have been battling cases in Romania as well as in Britain, including accusations of human trafficking, money laundering and sex crimes.
The Tate brothers, who are known for promoting an antagonistic, anti-feminist brand of masculinity, have vigorously denied all of the accusations against them, arguing that their wealth and outspokenness has made them targets.
The brothers sued the woman who brought the suit, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, for defamation in 2023, accusing her and another woman of conspiring to defraud and falsely imprison them by giving what they said was fabricated evidence to the Romanian authorities. That information, the brothers said, helped lead to their arrests on charges of trafficking and forming an organized crime group.
The new complaint, filed on Monday in Circuit Court in Palm Beach County, Fla., said the Tates’ defamation lawsuit was part of a campaign to “bully and harass” Ms. Doe into recanting her testimony to the Romanian authorities.
Ms. Doe, 23, and her parents were granted anonymity by the court because of concerns over their safety. She feared being harmed by the Tate brothers or their followers, said Dani Pinter, a lawyer and a senior vice president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, who is representing the woman.
“I look forward to my day in court, where evidence and facts — not narratives — will decide the outcome,” Ms. Doe said in a statement.
Joseph D. McBride, a lawyer representing Andrew and Tristan Tate, said there was no evidence that his clients had engaged in human trafficking and that the truth was on their side.
“The fact that these people are now doubling and tripling down on what is nothing more than an abject lie is absolutely hilarious,” he said, adding that “there is no chance in hell that they’re going to win.”
Ms. Doe was 20 when she first met Tristan Tate online in 2021, according to the complaint. The two met up shortly after, when he was visiting Miami for a work event, according to the complaint, and they became romantically involved. After Mr. Tate returned to Romania, he told her he had feelings for her and asked her to join him, it said.
But after landing in Romania in 2022, Ms. Doe said, she felt the experience was “not normal.” Mr. Tate was rarely available and told her she could not have “external friends.” She lived with several other women, two of whom “appeared to be working very long hours” on OnlyFans, a platform known for adult content, the complaint said. “She became concerned she was lured to Romania on false pretenses,” the complaint said.
Another woman in the home, identified in the complaint as Mary Doe, also moved to Romania in 2022, believing she was in a relationship with Andrew Tate. After she arrived in Romania, he restricted her movements, said she could not go out alone and coerced her into having group sex with other women, Jane Doe’s complaint says. He referred to Mary Doe as “slave” in some messages, the complaint said, and in another told her, “You’re property owned by me.”
In their 2023 lawsuit against Jane Doe, the Tates pointed to closed-circuit television footage that they said showed the two women “freely entering and leaving the premises at their leisure,” and they denied any involvement in human trafficking.
They also pointed to text messages from Jane Doe to Mary Doe in which she appeared to discuss efforts to “keep those guys in jail” and their plans to write a movie together, according to a ruling last November that allowed the suit against Jane Doe to go forward. That exchange, the Tates said in an amended complaint, proved that the women were conspiring to incarcerate them for “financial gain and fame.”
They had also cited messages in which Jane Doe appeared to tell a friend that she was able to leave, and to not contact the authorities.
But Jane Doe said in her complaint that she and Mary Doe had wanted to escape to London first before reporting “the criminal activity they had witnessed” to the authorities.
It was only after she shared her concerns with her parents and a friend in the U.S. Marine Corps that the U.S. Embassy in Romania received a report of “an American in trouble,” the complaint said. The Romanian authorities, who were already investigating the Tate brothers, raided a compound that the Tates owned a week after her arrival, it added.
In December 2022, the brothers were arrested on charges of human trafficking and forming an organized criminal group. Since then, their legal team has been in a protracted battle over various accusations, custody arrangements and the seizure of millions of dollars in assets.
In a victory for the brothers, a Romanian court in December blocked the case against Andrew Tate from going to trial because it had found issues in the indictment, including that his right to a defense had been violated.
The Romanian authorities are still investigating the brothers over separate allegations involving the trafficking of minors and money laundering. Once the Romanian cases are concluded, courts have ruled that the brothers will be extradited to Britain to face sex crime charges there. Four British women have also sued Andrew Tate, claiming that he raped and abused them.
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