Young woman tearfully describes alleged rape by Benjamin Mendy
A young woman tearfully told detectives how she woke up in bed with Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy raping her.
A young woman tearfully told detectives how she woke up in bed with Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy raping her.
The woman, aged 19 at the time, said she had been drinking champagne with Mendy, his friends and other young women at China White nightclub in Manchester, before returning to the footballer’s Cheshire mansion.
Her police interview was played to jurors at Mendy’s trial at Chester Crown Court.
Mendy denies eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault against seven young women.
After spending time in the swimming pool, the woman became sleepy and went up to a top floor bedroom at the house owned by Mendy, 28, in Mottram St Andrew near Prestbury, the court heard.
She changed out of the bikini she had brought with her and into her underwear and fell asleep, alone, in the double bed.
In the police interview, played to jurors, the woman, breaking down in tears, said: “I woke up to find Ben on top of me, but I was on my side. It was horrific, I was on my period.
“I remember five seconds of it and him putting a towel under me. I remember saying, ‘No. I’m on my period’.”
The woman, who described herself as “out of it” or “6/10” drunk, is asked if there was “any chance” Mendy could have thought she wanted to have sex with him that night.
She replied: “No, because I don’t know him that well.”
The woman said two or three months before the alleged rape, she had sex with Mendy, “like a one-night thing” but that she was sober and it was consensual.
Under cross-examination, Eleanor Laws QC, defending Mendy, suggested her account of what happened, waking up to find Mendy raping her, was the “exact same” allegation made by her friend, who the footballer is also accused of raping the same evening.
The witness replied: “I have not spoken to her.”
Mendy’s 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.
Prosecutors allege Mendy is a “predator” who turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game.
The trial continues.