She continued: “Andrew is a controversial public figure.” In an apparent attempt to show that Tate is subject to the hyperbole, she added: “He said that he had a laser vision, that he does not sleep, that the tigers do not attack him because they have an agreement.”
Petrescu also said that in one of the online videos of Tate, he says that rape in Romania “is a very serious crime” and that he “wanted to live in a country with strong rules against the abuse of women”. (Buzzfeed News could not locate the video, and Petrescu did not provide a link when asked.)
But reality in the field in Romania is very different. In addition to material poverty and lack of education with many women live, factors such as the geographic location of the country (near the Middle East and Western Europe), coupled with its belonging to the EU, facilitate travel and allow international and domestic traffic.
The US State Department has regularly criticized Romania’s response to the omnipresent human beings in its annual reports on the issue. The lastPublished in July 2022, notes the continuous efforts of the authorities to improve, but concludes that “Romania remains a main source country for sexual trafficking and victims of trafficking in Europe”. According to the report, more than a third of the victims identified in sex traffic are children. Romanian officials have been investigated for traffic suspected, according to the report.
Exacerbates the situation is the fact that investigative institutions are under-strength and overwhelmed. A prosecutor of the Directorate of Investigation into Organized Crime and Terrorism, the same department investigating Tate, said that an obstacle that prosecutors had to combat the growing phenomenon of human trafficking was a lack of specialized judicial police, similar to higher detectives, in the Romanian system.
“Trade in human beings and modern slavery have become a national sport in Romania,” said the prosecutor, who spoke with Buzzfeed News on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized for media interactions by his superiors. “We have prosecutors, but not enough police officers assigned in our offices to deal with business.”
Meanwhile, the gangs, which are often made up of dozens of members fulfilling each of the specific functions, earn millions of dollars a year and have access to resources such as international safe houses, firearms, false travel documents and expensive lawyers.
Iulian Lorincz, a member of the Romanian Parliament who recently filed a law aimed at stimulating the resources available for the authorities against traffickers in human beings, Buzzfeed News told the Tate affair was far from isolated.
“Tate has seen a vulnerable state and a multitude of vulnerable women and has chosen to come here,” said Lorincz, adding that he thought that “misogyny plays a role” in the social and institutional attitude of Romania towards women’s traffic. “Romania has not invested sufficiently in the protection of victims,” he added.
The arrests of the tates and their alleged accomplices were the exception rather than the rule, according to local experts, Buzzfeed News spoke, and international policy could have been at stake.
“The United States Embassy is very powerful in Romania,” said Alexandru Gică, a criminal lawyer in Bucharest, commenting that the Tate investigation was triggered by a tip sent to the Bucharest embassy concerning a young American who claimed to be held against her will and attacked by Tate.
“Tate probably thought it would be isolated from the legal consequences” in Romania, said the nameless prosecutor, adding that he believed that an American had caused charges against Tate embarrassed the local authorities and prompted them to take faster measures.
“If she had been Romanian, I think they would have moved more slowly,” he added.
