A Northern Ireland MP has launched legal action against the self-styled misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother over social media posts made in the past week.
A lawyer for Sorcha Eastwood, an MP for the Alliance party, said the posts were made on Friday, the day after she had told MPs that she was a “survivor of abuse” and had received rape threats.
Kevin Winters, one of Northern Ireland’s best-known solicitors with a series of cases against the state in relation to deaths during the Troubles, confirmed he was acting for the MP.
“We are instructed to issue legal proceedings against Andrew and Tristan Tate over their continued publication of social media postings on 10 January 2025,” he said.
“We can confirm service of correspondence on today’s date to their solicitors. In light of the sensitivities of the issues engaged, we have no further comment at this stage.”
The posts that prompted Eastwood to launch the legal action were made on social media the day after a debate on violence against women and girls in the House of Commons.
Eastwood’s lawyer did not provide details of the claim but Tate’s timeline shows he commented on Friday on posts she had made in October about male role models. During the Commons debate she revealed that a member of the public had “came up and said they wanted to rape” her during a school visit she was leading at Stormont.
“There were two people there and we just kind of were paralysed with the response, and that was not the right response,” she said. “Not from me, but from the people around.”
In November Eastwood urged the UK government to “start the conversation” about the “throwaway misogyny” on social media that she believes is fuelling a reversal of respect for women in real life among some boys and young men.
Tate was banned from TikTok, YouTube and Facebook after the platforms accused him of posting hate speech and misogynistic comments, including that women should bear responsibility for being sexually assaulted.
But he remains popular on X, with more than 10 million followers, many of them young men and schoolchildren.
Lawyers representing Andrew and Tristan Tate have been approached for a response.
A Romanian court lifted a house arrest order against Tate replacing it with a lighter preventative measure pending the outcome of a criminal investigation, a spokesperson for Tate said on Tuesday.
Tate has been under house arrest since August when prosecutors started a second criminal investigation against him, his brother Tristan and four other suspects. They face accusations of forming an organised criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering. They have all denied wrongdoing.
