This website uses cookies

Read our Privacy policy and Terms of use for more information.

In partnership with

LUNCH BREAK READS

Happy Tuesday.

Four heavy stories today that come at you from different directions.

  • An Aboriginal Australian woman engineered her own arrest because she believed prison would keep her safe. Eleven days later, guards were watching a monitor while she died.

  • Andrew Tate didn't just traffic women. He documented his methods in real time for thousands of paying members, and named his curriculum the "Pimping Hoes Degree."

  • Seven women say West Ham billionaire David Sullivan used the promise of modeling careers to pressure them for sex. He resigned hours before the story went live.

  • Black military officers describe watching the Pentagon dismantle two centuries of hard-won progress, one portrait, one promotion, one redacted textbook at a time.

Brett

01 • 15 Minute Read
ABC News Australia Kirstie Wellauer, Joanna McCarthy, and Ben Sveen
The Last Holding Place
Tammy Shipley knew she was in crisis. So she did what made sense to her: she walked into a police station and asked to be locked up. She thought prison would keep her safe. Instead, she ended up alone in a cell, having seizures for hours while guards walked past. She died alone in her cell 11 days after she first asked for help and protection. Her family only found out what really happened two years later, when a coronial inquest began and they saw the CCTV footage for the first time.
Read the Story →
02 • 84 Minute Read
The New Yorker Heidi Blake
Andrew Tate's Empire of Abuse
Manosphere influencer and right-wing menace Andrew Tate built a webcam pornography empire in Romania by recruiting vulnerable women through manufactured romantic relationships. He then systematically dismantled their resistance to sex work through financial dependency, isolation, and psychological manipulation and documented in real time for paying members of his online club "War Room". Three British women accused him of rape and strangulation in 2015; Hertfordshire police botched the investigation so badly that prosecutors declined to charge him. Romanian authorities arrested him on human trafficking charges in 2022, but the case stalled after Trump's election. This is a huge story detailing the cruelty and evil of Andrew and Tristan Tate.
Read the Story (Might be Paywalled) →
03 • 15 Minute Read
BBC Billy Kenber, Hannah Price, and Sophie Smith
West Ham co-owner accused of preying on women for sex
Seven women have accused West Ham co-owner David Sullivan of using his control over glamour modeling work to pressure them into sex during private business meetings at his Essex mansion, some when they were teenagers. The allegations span the 1980s through the 1990s. Sullivan resigned as club co-chairman hours before the investigation published. Eight women have separately made disclosures to police; no charges have ever been brought. One force described the failure to search Sullivan's property during a 2008 arrest as a "missed opportunity." The Football Association launched a safeguarding investigation in recent years. Sullivan denies all allegations and says he plans to sue the BBC.
Read the Story →
04 • 23 Minute Read
The Atlantic Clint Smith
The Betrayal of Black Patriots
A portrait of the first Black four-star general in American history hung in the Air Force Art Gallery until U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had it removed. Dozens of Black officers say that is the visible edge of a quiet campaign to push them out of the military entirely, and some of them have decided to stay and fight it from inside.
Unlocked for LBR Readers →

Join the Lunch Club

📣 Subscriber Shoutout: Thanks to Jacob from Brooklyn, New York for supporting LBR this week.

This newsletter is free. If you want more, consider joining The Lunch Club for access to more content and to support our growth.

Join the Lunch Club →

Keep Reading