Right-wing influencer Lauren Southern alleges she was raped by Andrew Tate in 2018
Southern, 30, a Canadian podcaster and formerly prominent figure in the alt-right, has shared details of the alleged assault while she was heavily intoxicated in an explosive new memoir, This Is Not Real Life, which she describes as a look at the 'total, unfiltered chaos behind the scenes of my time in media'.
In the book, parts of which Southern has published for free on her Substack blog, she recounts taking a trip to Romania in February 2018 with British far-right personality Tommy Robinson and their video producers to meet some 'wealthy crypto investors'.
There they met Tate, 38, a former kickboxer and controversial men's rights influencer currently fighting rape and human trafficking charges in Romania and the UK.
According to Southern, after an apparently unfruitful business meeting at Tate's Bucharest compound, she was invited back alone that evening.
He took her out to a club and bought her drinks, writes Southern, who says she quickly became so intoxicated she remembers lying on a couch and vomiting in a bathroom before being carried out semiconscious by Tate.
'It was kind of my fault,' Southern writes.
'I can trace every moment I had the opportunity to turn things around, right up until the point when everything went wrong.
'The truth is, I could have said no to that strange business meeting overseas, at least until I had more information. I could have refused to go to the club until my friends were with me. I could have turned down the drinks.
'With whatever little sense I had left, I could have said no to what I foolishly thought was a harmless cuddle when I had no intention of going any further. But honestly, I'm not sure it would have mattered at that point.
'This wasn't a case of mixed signals or intoxicated blurred lines. I fought back. I was pleading. I just didn't realise there was a point of no return, a moment where my voice would no longer have any power.
'I'd rather not give a detailed account, so I'll keep it simple.
'He carried me back to the hotel room and asked me to sleep beside him. I said yes. I was incredibly intoxicated, and some part of me convinced myself that because he was Tommy's friend he wasn't particularly dangerous.
'It was a poor decision, but it happened. He kissed me. I wasn't expecting it, and I wasn't looking for it, but I kissed him back briefly and then told him I wanted to sleep. I was extraordinarily tired.
'He wanted to go further. I said no, very clearly, multiple times, and tried to pull his hands off me. He put his arm around my neck and began strangling me unconscious. I tried to fight back. He repeatedly strangled me every time I regained enough consciousness to pull at his arms.
'I'd prefer not to share the rest. It's pretty obvious.'
Southern alleges that 'the last conversation we had in person consisted of Andrew telling me I'd better not tell the press about what he'd done as I packed my bags to rush out of my hotel room'.
'I told him not to worry; I was the girl against feminism, after all,' she writes.
'I couldn't be doing that. I'd spent so long fighting the idea of victimhood on ideological grounds that of course I would ignore my own on those same grounds.
'It wouldn't be very helpful to 'the cause' (or my career, for that matter) for me to become exactly what I criticised. A victim. Worse, a woman, victim of a man. One who literally did everything wrong. Why was I out drinking in this strange country with strange men? What did I expect?'
According to Southern, the alleged assault 'broke me psychologically' and she 'cycled through different forms of denial'.
'It's taken me years to even begin to process it clearly, and to take full responsibility for my own behaviour,' she writes.
She adds that her 'frustration grew over time' at conservative media 'turning Andrew Tate into a hero' even as 'more and more evidence came to light about this man's operations'.
'As I write this, he's still under house arrest for alleged sex trafficking and exploitation, including 'repeated sexual relations and acts' with a fifteen-year-old,' she writes.
'Frankly, you didn't need my story to see the direction it all pointed; you could just listen to what the man himself was saying.'
Southern claims Tate 'eventually apologised, for 'making me think badly of him', as he put it', and that when she pressed him on his actions 'he told me to go to police'.
'I laughed and reminded him of his own words: that the police were already paid off,' she writes.
She adds that she had in fact 'reluctantly' reported the matter to UK police the next day, 'only to be met with indifference'.
'They told me an investigation could only be pursued in Romania, a country where I had been explicitly warned about police corruption,' she writes.
'Attempts to involve Canadian authorities later led to similar dead ends.'
Southern says she also visited a women's hospital and made a report around a week after the event.
'The report documented my account of asphyxiation, five years before Vice News would report in 2023 that Tate used the same method on other victims in the UK in 2015,' she writes.
Tate has been contacted for comment. He is yet to publicly respond to the allegations.
Southern, who drew violent protests during a 2018 tour of Australia with fellow right-wing Canadian podcaster Stefan Molyneux, largely stepped away from public life in 2019.
In 2023 she published a lengthy YouTube video in which she revealed she had married and had a son with an unnamed Australian who 'worked in a capacity for the feds' and led a 'James Bond lifestyle'.
'I've been afraid to talk about it for various reasons, not least of all people wondering if I'm a full blown schizo,' she wrote in a lengthy X post accompanying the video.
Southern went on to detail how her 'life fell apart' when her husband filed for divorce and abandoned their son, as she moved back to live with her parents and later in a trailer park.
She claimed her ex had grown frustrated after his security clearance was downgraded due to his association with her, limiting his access to certain jobs and promotions.
'If I'm being honest I nearly lost my mind,' she said. 'I think almost anyone would. I was beyond heartbroken.'
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