Tate-Inspired Human Trafficking and Its Damage to the Rule of Law

The manosphere figures Andrew and Tristan Tate encourage (young) men to adopt potentially extremist and misogynistic ideologies and behaviours through their so-called ‘Hustler University’s PhD’ – short for ‘Pimpin’ Hoes Degree’. Now those ‘teachings’ apparently inspired actual human trafficking committed by two Dutch brothers.

On 27 July 2026, the two young men from a village of fewer than 38,000 inhabitants, Maassluis, were convicted of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and of possession and circulation of child sexual abuse material. In its judgment, the criminal court referred to the older brother’s notes on ways to earn money motivated by the ‘influencer’ Andrew Tate.
 

A business model of exploitation

Three girls, one of whom thought she was in a relationship with one of the convicted brothers, and one boy with a substance abuse disorder who was in love with him, aged between thirteen and seventeen years old, got targeted. “Won over through words” rather than violence, three of these four Ukrainian refugee victims ultimately ended up in sex work in the home of the perpetrators’ father, livestreamed via Discord and recorded on cameras concealed in a fake air freshener and a phone charger. The perpetrators acted, as the court held, “deliberately with a view to a business model aimed at earning money off the backs of minors.”

That business model seemingly rested on convincing their victims to go a step further every time. Initially some of them were ‘hired’ to clean and later to sell vapes. After that, they were made to sell used underwear via a website, thereupon to have to deliver that worn lingerie to buyers. During several of those drop-offs, the buyers masturbated in the victims’ presence. Subsequently, the victims were made to massage ’clients’, during which sexual acts had to be conducted or endured. Three of them were abused for money. The court explained the criminal acts involved as “a sliding scale”. In human trafficking jargon, this is called grooming.

Grooming involves a process through which perpetrators deliberately build an emotional connection and trust to manipulate, control, and exploit their victims in order to achieve ‘optimal business success’. Rather than forcing victims outright into the most lucrative forms of sexual exploitation, they ready them through activities that do not yet impact their sexual integrity as much. Starting with other forms of human trafficking like labour exploitation in the form of forced cleaning and coerced criminality through selling vapes to minors who cannot legally buy them themselves, they incrementally increase their grip on their victims. The ‘added benefit’ of such grooming is that victims think they have agency, while being dissuaded from reporting to authorities when made to feel implicated in criminal acts. Combined with a pretend loving relationship, victims believe they act on their own initiative and choose to earn money for the people they love.
 

Proactively following the money

By focusing on the end-point of sex trafficking, these criminal activities are incorrectly seen separately from its preceding grooming. In reality, human traffickers however often engage in poly-criminality. They tend to use a range of other forms of human trafficking before turning to its most profitable excesses, frequently coupled with laundering its proceeds and corruption. In our research project entitled COMCRIM we therefore seek to highlight those early warning signs during grooming and the multi-faceted business model of organised human trafficking. If the money from the sold vapes and worn lingerie would have immediately been followed to all criminal actors involved, these victims could have been spared worse. Proactive detection of (potential) victims coupled with following financial flows to all participating criminals centralizes prevention through proving intent and avoiding subsequent exploitation.
 

Damage to the rule of law

This Tate-inspired business model accompanied by their ten-year-long possible public impunity should moreover be researched not only with a focus on the entire range of criminal acts committed, but also for its potential to undermine the democratic rule-of-law. Human trafficking is already found to have such negative effects on the public’s trust in the institutions that are essential for the rule of law and democracy in the Netherlands. For example, in 2024, the Dutch expertise centre on human trafficking established that the crime in all of its manifestations causes “unfair competition in (the lower end of) the labour market, abuse of (labour) regulations or permits, increasing pressure on the healthcare system, and public nuisance caused by, for example, unlicensed residential prostitution.” Similar negative impacts of sex trafficking on the democratic rule-of-law were found in the United States in 2019 already.

“These events have ignited a crisis of public trust in the Department [of Justice] and exacerbated the erosion of trust that the American people have in our institutions of republican self-government more broadly,” a bipartisan group of four Senators observed when Epstein deceased while awaiting his sex trafficking trial seven years ago. His impunity effectively lasted 24 years, with only a brief interruption in 2008 when he was allowed to plead guilty to charges for at least one victim whom the prosecutor misrepresented as the oxymoron of a willing underage prostitute. Even during his work release after thirteen months of imprisonment, Epstein allegedly continued his abuse. His only convicted conspirator, Maxwell, now sits in a low-security prison. In 2020, research preceding COMCRIM already identified the rule-of-law undermining effects of their organised human trafficking on not only the United States including in the US Virgin Islands, New York, Florida, and New Mexico, but also the United Kingdom and France. Nowadays, its consequences can even be felt in additional countries such as Poland, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, and Lithuania.
 

A pattern beyond one case: E-pimps monetising loneliness

Labelled ‘Epstein in real-time’, the Tate brothers currently await extradition in the United States. The Crown Prosecution Service of the United Kingdom has decided to bring further charges against the Tates for, amongst other allegations, three counts of arranging or facilitating human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Both brothers were recently profiled by The New Yorker and The New York Times as purportedly trafficking in the United Kingdom, Romania, and possibly the United States. Now, we can add another to the list of countries apparently affected: the Netherlands.

While this is only one criminal case, the Dutch National Rapporteur on human trafficking and sexual violence against children already warns against a “trend of e-pimps.” An increasing number of boys, who would have never gone into sex trafficking if not for the seeming protection by the anonymity afforded by their laptop, have found this new criminal industry. Early warning signs such as potentially extremist and misogynistic ideologies and non-sexual human trafficking activities should therefore be central to research. Equally important is studying the demand side, seeing how these business models appear to monetise loneliness. Studies should consequently also examine the laundering of human trafficking proceeds, including through cryptocurrency, and, when used for corruption, as possible causes of perpetrators’ impunity.
 

Closing the research gap

Paradoxically, more research is currently conducted into how conspiracies about human trafficking like QAnon and Pizzagate undermine the rule of law and democracy than the actual crime itself. Research into the consequences of that real-life crime of human trafficking is difficult after all, because most instances go un(der)reported and un(der)prosecuted. This crime is riddled with a dark figure — the gap between offences committed and recorded. Also, the offence is still often seen separately rather than as part of a pattern whether committed by organised gangs and networks or as a business model taught online. However, now the online and offline dimensions of human trafficking are converging, it is even more urgent to fill this research gap on organised human trafficking and its possible democratic rule-of-law undermining effects.