Benjamin Mendy: what did woman Manchester City footballer is accused of raping say in court - trial latest

Benjamin Mendy told a woman he is accused of raping “it’s fine, I have had sex with 10,000 women”, a court has heard.

The 28-year-old Manchester City footballer is accused of multiple sex offences, with prosecutors claiming he is a “predator” who “turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game”.

Chester Crown Court was told that the woman was left bleeding from the alleged rape, and that Mendy said to her, “Don’t tell anyone and you can come over here every night”.

Mendy denies eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault against seven young women.

His co-accused Louis Saha Matturie, 41, of Eccles, Salford, denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault relating to eight young women.

What was said during the woman’s evidence?

On the fourth day of the trial, the woman’s tearful police interview was played to the jury.

The court heard she had been out with three friends at a bar in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, on a Sunday night in October 2020.

The trial heard they had a table and got talking to three men, with Mendy buying drinks, and when the bar closed she and her friends and others were invited back to the footballer’s mansion, in Mottram St Andrew, an isolated village nearby.

At the house she sat down near the indoor swimming pool and started scrolling through her phone, but Mendy came over and grabbed it from her hand claiming she was taking photos of him and saying he could be “fined” hundreds of thousands of pounds, the court heard.

She told the jury that Mendy walked up some stairs saying he was checking the phone, and as it was unlocked he started going through her “private pictures”.

He went through a door, opened by a fingerprint touchscreen, and she followed him into a bedroom and the door closed behind them, she said.

She told the court that she said to Mendy: “Listen, I want my phone, I don’t know what you think is going on. I don’t want sex with you. He said, ‘The door is locked anyway’.

The woman said he said to her: “If you just take your clothes off, I just want to look at you. I promise.”

She told police she thought getting undressed would be “the lesser of two evils” and she would not then have to have sex with him, so stripped to her underwear then told him she wanted to go.

Mendy threw her phone on the bed and as she went to get it he approached her from behind and pushed her on to the bed, she said.

The jury heard she was raped three times by Mendy in the next 20 minutes or so, as she told him: “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to have sex with you. I need to go.”

What did she say happened afterwards?

She told the court: “My body was so tense. It was just this pain.”

She said he told her afterwards “You’re too shy” and that he had had sex with thousands of women, and she could visit his house again.

“It was like a privilege to come over to have that done every night by him,” she told police.

She said she left the bedroom, went to the toilet then left the house with her friends.

The next day at work she was waiting for a meeting when a colleague came over.

Mendy’s accuser told police: “She just looked at me and said, ‘Is everything all right?’ I just started crying my eyes out. I just said I was in a situation last night. I don’t know what to do but I don’t feel OK about it.”

She added: “What makes me really upset is how many times I said no.”

Later she spoke to her mother, sister and a sexual assault referral centre and went to police around three weeks later.

The day after the alleged rape she got a Snapchat message from Mendy with lots of question marks, and one from Saha Matturie saying: “Are you OK? Please can you call me so we can discuss?”

She took screenshots and blocked both their numbers.

The trial continues.