Benjamin Mendy of Manchester City is facing new charges after his trial for eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape, and one act of sexual assault was adjourned on Monday at Chester Crown Court.
All ten accusations against Mendy, though, have been refuted.
Moments after leaving a bedroom where footballer Benjamin Mendy is accused of raping her three times, a young woman “looked like she had seen a ghost,” according to testimony from her companion in court.
The companion claimed that after the 20-year-old went missing with Mendy for about 20 minutes during a party at the Manchester City defender’s home in Cheshire, she had gone to hunt for the woman, whom she regarded “like a sister.”
The witness said in Chester Crown Court that she observed her companion exiting an upper bedroom and heading downstairs.
“How did she look to you?”, Timothy Cray QC, the prosecutor who is trying Mendy, 28, who is accused of several sex assaults, asked the friend?
According to the witness, “She looked like she had seen a ghost. She looked blank. She looked dead.”
The prosecution heard that shortly after, the rape complainant told her friend that she was “very keen” to leave and go home.
The 20-year-old attempted to “brush off” the incident when they arrived at her home, according to the witness, and assured her companion that she was “fine.”
However, the friend said before the jury that she also discussed “being in a situation where you don’t want to do something, feel forced so you just go along with something.”
The complainant claimed that Mendy had promised not to touch her if she stripped while he looked at her, but that the next morning, Mendy “pushed” her down on a bed and sexually assaulted her.
The court previously heard that both young women were part of a party of four friends who, on October 11, 2020, returned to Mendy’s house, The Spinney in Mottram St. Andrew, Cheshire, following drinks at a nearby tavern.
Due to concerns about gatherings during the Covid-19 pandemic, sensitivity to social media images and posts, and other factors, the girls had been instructed not to use their phones while visiting Mendy.
According to testimony given in court, the 20-year-old woman was looking through her phone while standing next to a pool when the man approached and “snatched” it from her to see if she had been snapping photos and sharing them online.
She claimed that after informing the footballer she did not want sex, he brought her to an upstairs bedroom where the alleged sex attack took place despite her request for it to be returned.
Mendy, according to the prosecution, is a “predator” who “turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game.”
Mendy disputes eight charges of rape, one charge of attempted rape, and one charge of sexual assault involving seven young women.
The football player’s friend and fixer, Louis Saha Matturie, 41, is a co-accused and is accused of having the responsibility of locating young ladies for sex.
Matturie, of Eccles, Salford, denies four counts of sexual assault and eight counts of rape involving eight young people.
If any sexual activity did occur with women or girls, according to both men, it was consenting.
