On July 11, Ex-Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy denied rape charges at his retrial for sexually attacking two women.
Mendy is accused of attempted rape of woman A, aged 21, at his Cheshire Home in October 2018. He has also allegedly raped Woman B, aged 24, in 2020.
However, the French player has told at his retrial that he “would never force” a woman to have sex, and both the happenings for which he is accused were consensual sexual encounters.
Judge Stephen Everett at Chester Crown Court told the jury of six women and as many men that this was a retrial. In January, the judge told the jury in the initial trial that Mendy was not guilty. The jury couldn’t agree with the verdicts of these two allegations.
While standing on the retrial, Mendy was asked about a woman whom he met at a nightclub in Barcelona in 2017 for the first time.
During the initial trial, the jury understood that one of Mendy’s friends became close to the woman. They were in contact with each other, and after a year, the two met at Mendy’s house in 2018.
After partying the whole night, the following morning, Mendy went to a bedroom where the woman was showering, and the two began hugging each other. The woman accused Mendy of raping her before she could set herself free.
“I asked her if we [are] OK to have sex. She told me, ‘No’ because of my friend. I was like, ‘It’s fine, my friend says it’s OK, so if you want, he’s OK with that.’ It’s when she started to be like that – upset, sad. I just left the room,” said the footballer.
Two years later, the second woman was out with friends at a bar in Alderley Edge, near Mendy’s home, when they were invited back to the footballer’s house. She alleges Mendy took her phone from her, which contained “intimate” photos, then led her to his locked bedroom as she asked for her phone back.
In 2022, Mendy invited woman B to his house when she was with her friends at a bar in Alderley Edge. The woman accused Mendy of taking her phone, which contained private pictures. The accused footballer threw the phone on his bed in a locked bedroom and coerced her to have sex with him when she went to collect it back.
Mendy told the jury the two had a consensual sexual encounter and later exchanged Snapchat IDs.
