Following Andrew Tate's arrest, Romanian cam girls speak out

Lina PortmanMay 25, 2024

0 6 minutes read

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It's nighttime in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and Selena (not her real name), 27, is getting ready for work. She puts on a black lingerie bodysuit, puts on lace stockings and puts on makeup.

His workplace is a queen-size bed in front of a large monitor and a camera mounted on a tripod. At hand there is a microphone and a keyboard. She goes online and starts warming up.

Selena is a webcam model. Using an adult live streaming platform, she performs in front of fans and viewers around the world, from the United States to Australia, and chats with them in real time, in exchange for advice. She does not reveal how much she earns, but her income, she says, is better than what she previously earned in the agricultural sector.

It's the promise of money that attracts young women to this sector, she says, especially in a country like Romania, where salaries are among the lowest in the European Union.

“There are girls who probably even make $10,000 a day. So, a lot of money,” she said.

Cam girl Selena during a live streaming session at one of Romania's many online adult chat studios, Models4Models, in Bucharest. Source: SBS / Data line

Romania's tax authority, the National Agency of Tax Administration, has suggested that there are around 5,000 registered webcam studios across the country, employing up to 400,000 women.

With a combination of poverty, high internet speeds and low employment rates, industry players say around 40% of the total global industry is based here, earning the country the label of the cam capital of the world. girls.

But Romania's thriving sex cam industry is facing new scrutiny following the arrest of . He and his brother Tristan ran an adult webcam business in Bucharest. They were arrested in December 2022 and for human trafficking, sexual abuse and rape.

Open company

Models like Selena are increasingly managed by studios that provide them with everything they need to work online. From luxurious rooms to clothing to professional lighting and virtual reality cameras, it's tech support and privacy that most young women don't have at home.

“This is one of the advantages of working with a studio,” explains Models4Models representative Alexa-Ioana Stefan. Run by two former cam models, it is one of the largest studios and operates 17 rooms spread over five floors of a building in Bucharest.

Over the past decade, major studios like Models4Models have quietly pushed to legitimize the industry, moving it away from the obscure black market and operating in the open.

They claim the industry is completely legal and they now pay taxes and employ models through copyright contracts.

They advertise publicly, some recruiting new young models from universities or targeted ads and live streams on social media platforms such as TikTok.

Alexa-Ioana Stefan from Romanian adult cam studio Models4Models leads a Q&A session to recruit models to TikTok. Source: SBS / Data line

One company, Charm Studios, even decided to park cars emblazoned with the face of Bianca Dragusanu, a popular Romanian influencer, on the streets of Bucharest.

Stefan said most women who get into webcam work do so for financial reasons.

“Most of the girls — to people's surprise — are women with college degrees, master's degrees or doctorates,” she said.

“These are highly educated women, who may have tried other jobs but weren't happy with the money they were making and are now trying a new industry.”

Operating practices

Although a large number of studios operate legally, Romania's webcam industry remains unregulated and subject to allegations of sexual exploitation.

“I think the studio always put a lot of pressure on you,” says Oana Maria Zaharia, a former webcam model, now a journalist and model on the site OnlyFans.

“They're always trying to push your limits a little bit, like spending more time on camera or doing things you don't really want to do.”

She says she regularly saw studio intermediaries – such as supervisors, trainers or chatters who write on behalf of models during live broadcasts – manipulate models into overstepping their boundaries.

Three former cam girls agreed to speak with Dateline on condition of anonymity about a practice known as “meet-ups,” where webcam models are manipulated, threatened and coerced into having sex with customers in person.

While webcam studios say they strictly prohibit “dating,” cam girls say the practice is widespread.

Arya (not her real name) started working as a cam girl at a recording studio on her 18th birthday. At first she made a lot of money, but soon the studio began to cut revenue.

The studio manager then made him a proposition: meet a client in a hotel.

“He would suggest having sex with clients. He would take a cut because that's what my colleagues who make a lot of money actually do,” she said. “It was pimping by the book.”

Oana Maria Zaharia is a former webcam model who turned her back on the industry. Source: SBS / Data line

A link between webcam and sex trafficking

Andrew Tate's case and cam model testimonies are now prompting some of the country's leading human trafficking experts to sound the alarm.

Silvia Maria Tăbușcă is a prominent human rights lawyer who has been fighting organized crime, human trafficking and migrant smuggling in Romania for 20 years.

Working with the European Union's main police agencies and regulators, she fears the link between webcams and human trafficking extends well beyond Andrew Tate's case.

“It is clear that we are facing a challenge with human trafficking in general. We cannot really understand at the moment its true dimension, because we have not studied it until now. [But] we think if you look at something you really find the problem,” she told SBS Dateline.

Many illegal and unregistered webcam studios in Romania may be run from nondescript buildings, registered as different businesses like photo studios or online PR companies. Source: SBS / Data line

According to the U.S. government's latest human trafficking report, Romania is one of the top countries of origin for sex trafficking victims in Europe.

Romania's National Agency Against Trafficking in Persons, responsible for monitoring cases of human trafficking, confirmed to Dateline: “There is a growing trend of online recruitment of victims of human trafficking, and at the same time time, the exploitation of certain victims can also happen online, via platforms specializing in pornography.”

The agency claims to combat this problem through “prevention campaigns”.

Contacted by Dateline, police in the Bacau district — a city known for its illegal and unregistered adult webcam studios — confirmed that in 2021: “they brought five people and a company to court for crimes related to the management of an organized criminal group, to human trafficking, pimping, child pornography and sexual relations with a minor.

Bacau County Police also said that over the past five years, they have investigated four cases involving crimes of tax evasion and failure to report income obtained through video chat activities.

On the practice of “meeting”–ups', Tăbușcă says the difference between prostitution and trafficking lies in the willingness of the person to get involved in this activity.

Silvia Maria Tăbușcă is a prominent human rights lawyer fighting against human trafficking in Romania. Source: SBS / Data line

“If a person is willing to prostitute themselves, then there is no problem of exploitation. But if there is any form of coercion, emotional, financial, or even threats, we can consider that situation as a specific case of exploitation and potential human trafficking.

Tăbușcă has worked with prosecutors on several trafficking cases involving webcam studios.

In one case, she claims two Romanian cam girls were threatened and blackmailed into meeting clients in person and trafficked internationally.

“[They] attended a party in Dubai with businessmen. [The clients] paid 100,000 euros ($163,000) for each of them for a week to spend with them in this party, and [the girls] must accomplish everything that is asked of them.

“One of the girls was asked to have sex with a camel. And she did not want to comply with this request. So she was beaten very badly by the participants.”

Cam models and human trafficking experts are now calling for greater regulation of the sector, pointing out that it is still not officially recognized by the Romanian tax office (there is no official commercial code for that).

But beyond the trial of the Tate brothers, this remains a blind spot for both Romanian politicians and police.

“It is possible that decision-makers, politicians, do not really understand the extent of this phenomenon in Romania,” says Tăbușcă.

“There is no political will in Romania to change the legislation in order to really combat this phenomenon.”