In February 2018, Lauren Southern, a right-wing Canadian political influencer, met Andrew Tate on a trip to Bucharest, the Romanian capital.
Ms. Southern, then 22, was gaining prominence with provocative videos that expressed anti-feminist and anti-immigrant views. Mr. Tate, a British American kickboxer living in Romania, was building his own online brand of flashy hyper-masculinity — and was years away from public scrutiny over accusations of rape and human trafficking.
On that 2018 trip, Mr. Tate strangled and assaulted Ms. Southern in a hotel room while she was intoxicated, according to a self-published memoir that she released on Tuesday. Chapters of the book, “This Is Not Real Life,” that involve Mr. Tate were published on her Substack.
Ms. Southern declined to comment further on the allegations, but she provided The New York Times a copy of a 2018 report from a Toronto hospital where she said she had sought treatment. A nurse who examined Ms. Southern notes in the form, dated Feb. 28, 2018, that Ms. Southern had reported being strangled and assaulted by a 30-year-old man in Romania on Feb. 22. The hospital said this week that it was unable to authenticate the report because of patient privacy.
The man was not named in the report, but was described by Ms. Southern at the time as a person she had met who she believed was a “potential investor.”
Two people who were on the trip with Ms. Southern confirmed in interviews that she had told them the morning after she was with Mr. Tate in his hotel room that she had been assaulted.
A lawyer for Mr. Tate, 38, denied Ms. Southern’s claims. “It’s textbook extortion. She is lying through her teeth,” the lawyer, Joseph McBride, said in a phone interview. He added in a statement posted to social media that his client would pursue Ms. Southern, 30, for defamation. “Andrew’s going to lean into this with truth,” Mr. McBride said in the interview. “He’s got nothing to hide.”
Mr. McBride said that Ms. Southern’s claims were part of a “playbook” to weaponize previous consensual encounters for financial gain. “If there was an encounter, it was 100 percent consensual,” he said.
Ms. Southern’s account adds to a growing list of accusations by women against Mr. Tate, all of which he has vigorously denied.
The British authorities this year authorized charges against him and his brother, Tristan Tate, for rape, assault and human trafficking, and four British women have filed a civil suit against Andrew Tate in London’s High Court. The brothers are also being investigated over allegations that they had abused and exploited multiple women in Romania.
In March, a Los Angeles woman, Brianna Stern, accused Mr. Tate in a civil complaint of beating and choking her, and said that she had reported the alleged assault to the Beverly Hills Police Department.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said in an email this month that a case concerning Mr. Tate had been “declined due to insufficient evidence.” A lawyer for Ms. Stern, Tony Buzbee, said that the office had been “extremely unprofessional” and had not contacted Ms. Stern about their decision. “This is why alleged victims are so reluctant to come forward.”
Mr. McBride said that the decision was a sign that the accusations against his client were unfounded. The brothers have also sued several people, including an American woman who gave testimony to Romanian prosecutors, for defamation over their accusations of wrongdoing.
In her book, Ms. Southern described meeting Mr. Tate in 2018 through Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a British far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson. Mr. Robinson told her that the Tate brothers were wealthy cryptocurrency investors in Romania who were interested in sponsoring a media project she would help lead, she wrote.
She flew to Bucharest with Mr. Robinson and two collaborators to meet the Tate brothers and visited Mr. Tate’s compound, she said. Ms. Southern said that she later agreed to meet with the Tates alone, believing that they would discuss the business opportunity. They took her to a night club where she had two drinks and felt “surprisingly intoxicated,” enough to feel sick, she wrote.
Mr. Tate took her back to her hotel room. Ms. Southern wrote that he kissed her and she kissed him back before telling him she wanted to sleep. “He wanted to go further. I said no, very clearly, multiple times, and tried to pull his hands off me,” she wrote. Mr. Tate then “began strangling me unconscious,” she wrote.
“He repeatedly strangled me every time I regained enough consciousness to pull at his arms,” she wrote. “I’d prefer not to share the rest. It’s pretty obvious.”
The next day, she said, she told Mr. Robinson and the two others on the trip, Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn, that Mr. Tate had assaulted her. Mr. Robertson and Mr. Llewelyn, who were collaborating with Ms. Southern, both confirmed in interviews that they had traveled to Bucharest with her in February 2018, and that Ms. Southern had described being assaulted by Mr. Tate the morning after the encounter. Mr. Robertson said that he recalled seeing marks on Ms. Southern’s neck.
Attempts on Wednesday to reach Mr. Robinson were unsuccessful. In a video posted to X on Wednesday, Mr. Robinson called Ms. Southern’s account “insanity.” He said in the video that he had stayed in a hotel room next door to Ms. Southern and Mr. Tate in Bucharest and saw Ms. Southern kissing Mr. Tate at the door the next morning. “It’s a bit weird to be kissing him at the door and getting in the car and messaging him the whole way” before accusing him of assault, Mr. Robinson said in the video.
Another friend of Ms. Southern’s who had worked with Mr. Robinson, Lucy Brown, said that Ms. Southern had seemed out of character after her return from the trip, and that Mr. Robertson, Mr. Llewelyn and Ms. Southern all told her about the alleged assault. (Ms. Brown is also being sued by Mr. Tate for defamation over her accusations that he has sexually assaulted others.)
When she returned to Canada, Ms. Southern went to Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, according to a sexual assault assessment form that she shared with The Times, and requested counseling and sexual health tests. The hospital report said that Ms. Southern had a physical examination and reported pain swallowing, red dots on her face and under her eyes, and other symptoms from strangulation.
The alleged assault was not reported to authorities because it happened “outside of Canadian jurisdiction,” the hospital form said. Ms. Southern contacted the British authorities to try report the allegation, she wrote, but was told that an investigation could be pursued only in Romania.
After her visit to Romania, she wrote, she was in denial about the alleged assault and remained on “great terms,” with Mr. Tate. Later, she confronted Mr. Tate via text messages about the night and accused him of assault. Ms. Southern shared with The Times text messages, dated to March 2018, that she said she had exchanged with Mr. Tate in which he denied any wrongdoing and told her that she had consented to lying in his bed, and that he had also been drunk.
He told her that they could settle it “in court.” Ms. Southern told him that she did not want to do that. “I’m not telling anyone Andrew,” she wrote. “It’s just not ok and you should know that.”
Days later, Mr. Tate messaged her again and said he felt terrible that she thought of him badly. “Prob never see each other again but really sorry if I upset you in anyway,” he wrote.
Ms. Southern said that it had taken years for her to process what happened, but decided to include sections about Mr. Tate in her book because she was “done with cowardice.”
“I’ve made mistakes, some mine alone, others shaped by the psychological toll of existing in a deeply toxic political space,” she said. “But let’s be clear: my personal drama doesn’t change the credibility of claims I’ve made.”
After the 2018 trip, Ms. Southern came under public scrutiny for handing out pamphlets saying “Allah Is a Gay God” in the English town of Luton, an episode that she said led to her being denied re-entry to Britain. That year, also gained attention for producing “Farmlands,” a 2018 documentary that focused on attacks on white South African farmers.
She was part of a roster of conservative influencers on Tenet Media, a platform that shared political commentary and conspiracy theories. Federal prosecutors said in an indictment filed last year that the group was part of a covert Russian influence operation to push pro-Kremlin messages. Ms. Southern later testified to a Canadian government committee that she had no knowledge of the Russian funding and that her ideas had not been influenced.
In recent months, she has largely stopped posting on social media.
Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends.
The post Lauren Southern, Former Right-Wing Commentator, Says Andrew Tate Assaulted Her appeared first on New York Times.
