Brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate escaped house arrest, after the Bucharest Court of Appeal judges decided that they can be investigated under judicial control. The decision can no longer be appealed. The decision was taken on Friday by a court of the Bucharest Court of Appeal. The court replaced the measure of house arrest with judicial control in the case where the two are being tried for forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking and rape. The two will be able to leave the house, subject to several conditions.
Therefore they must:
- appear before the preliminary chamber judge or the court whenever they are called;
- immediately inform the judicial body that ordered the measure or before which the case is pending regarding the change of residence;
- report to the police body assigned to supervise them, respectively the police station in the territorial constituency of the defendants’ residences, according to the supervision program drawn up by the police body or whenever they are called;
- not exceed the territorial limit of Ilfov County and the Municipality of Bucharest, except with the prior approval of the judge of the preliminary chamber or the court;
- not contact witnesses or victims.
Andrew and Tristan Tate were sent to court by DIICOT on June 20, being accused of constituting an organized criminal group, for the purpose of recruitment, accommodation and exploitation, by forcing some women to create materials with pornographic content, intended for distribution for a fee on profile sites. From these activities, the defendants would have obtained important sums of money.
The offenses for which they are being tried in this case before the Bucharest Court are the creation of an organized criminal group, continuous human trafficking, continuous rape (two material acts), illegal access to the computer system, alteration of the integrity of computer data, beating or other violence and incitement to this crime.
According to DIICOT, the crime of human trafficking would have been committed both on the territory of Romania, but also in the United States of America and Great Britain.
Investigators claim that brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate picked up young women under the pretext of starting a love relationship, after which they took them to a house in Ilfov County, where they were forced to produce video clips, which were then posted on adult websites.
The two brothers misled young women that they would like a marriage/cohabitation relationship and that they would have real feelings of love for them (the ‘loverboy’ method). The women were allegedly later transported and housed in a building in Ilfov County, where, through acts of physical violence and mental coercion (intimidation, constant surveillance, control and invoking alleged debts), they were sexually exploited by the group members by forcing to pornographic manifestations with a view to the production and dissemination, by means of social media platforms, of material having such a character and by submitting to the execution of a work, in a forced manner, in order to obtain important financial benefits consisting in the sums of money obtained as a result of accessing materials by users.
The first to react publicly to the news they will be investigated at large was Andrew Tate, through a message posted on a social network.