In February 2018, Lauren Southern, a right-wing Canadian political influencer, met Andrew Tate on a trip to Bucharest, the Romanian capital.
Ms. Southern, then 22, was gaining prominence with provocative videos that expressed anti-feminist and anti-immigrant views. Mr. Tate, a British American kickboxer living in Romania, was building his own online brand of flashy hyper-masculinity — and was years away from public scrutiny over accusations of rape and human trafficking.
On that 2018 trip, Mr. Tate strangled and assaulted Ms. Southern in a hotel room while she was intoxicated, according to a self-published memoir that she released on Tuesday. Chapters of the book, “This Is Not Real Life,” that involve Mr. Tate were published on her Substack.
Ms. Southern declined to comment further on the allegations, but she provided The New York Times a copy of a 2018 report from a Toronto hospital where she said she had sought treatment. A nurse who examined Ms. Southern notes in the form, dated Feb. 28, 2018, that Ms. Southern had reported being strangled and assaulted by a 30-year-old man in Romania on Feb. 22. The hospital said this week that it was unable to authenticate the report because of patient privacy.
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