She continued: “Andrew is a controversial public character.” In an apparent attempt to show that Tate was prone to hyperbole, she added: “He said he had laser vision, that he didn't sleep, that the tigers didn't attack him because they had an agreement.”
Petrescu also said that in one online video, Tate says that rape in Romania “is a very serious crime” and that he “wanted to live in a country with strict rules against the abuse of women.” (BuzzFeed News was unable to locate the video, and Petrescu did not provide a link when asked.)
But the reality in Romania is completely different. In addition to the material poverty and lack of education that many women live with, factors such as the country's geographic location (close to the Middle East and Western Europe) coupled with its EU membership facilitate travel and enable international and domestic trafficking.
The US State Department has regularly criticized Romania's response to widespread human trafficking in its annual reports on the issue. Lastpublished in July 2022, notes the authorities' ongoing efforts to improve the situation, but concludes that “Romania remains the main source country of victims of sex and labor trafficking in Europe.” More than a third of identified sex trafficking victims are children, according to the report. The report said Romanian officials were being investigated for suspected involvement in human trafficking.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that investigative institutions are under-resourced and overburdened. A prosecutor for the Organized Crime and Terrorism Investigation Directorate, the same department prosecuting the Tate case, said one of the obstacles prosecutors face in combating the growing phenomenon of human trafficking is the lack of specialized judicial police in the Romanian system, akin to senior detectives.
“Human trafficking and modern slavery have become a national sport in Romania,” said the prosecutor, who spoke to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity because his superiors have not cleared him to speak to the media. “We have prosecutors, but we don’t have enough assigned police officers in our offices to try cases.”
Meanwhile, the gangs, which often consist of dozens of members, each with 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 Lorinc, a member of the Romanian parliament who recently introduced legislation aimed at increasing the resources available to authorities to fight traffickers, told BuzzFeed News that Tate's case is far from isolated.
“Tate saw a vulnerable state and a lot of vulnerable women and decided to come here,” Lorinc said, adding that he believes “misogyny plays a role” in Romania’s social and institutional attitude toward trafficking in women. “Romania is not investing enough in protecting victims,” he added.
According to local experts BuzzFeed News spoke with, the arrests of the Tates and their alleged accomplices were the exception rather than the rule, and may have something to do with international politics.
“The US Embassy in Romania is very powerful,” said Alexandru Ghica, a criminal defense lawyer in Bucharest, commenting on the fact that the Tate investigation was reportedly prompted by a tip sent to the Bucharest embassy regarding a young American woman who alleged that Tate had held her against her will and had been assaulted.
“Tate probably thought he would be insulated from legal consequences” in Romania, the unnamed prosecutor said, adding that he believed the fact that an American woman had come forward with allegations against Tate had embarrassed local authorities and prompted them to take quicker action.
“If she had been Romanian, I think they would have acted more slowly,” he added.
