Benjamin Mendy: footballer tried to rape woman after shower, jury told

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The Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy tried to rape a woman who had gone to his house to meet another footballer in his entourage, a court has heard.

She told police the 28-year-old assaulted her after she had a shower in his mansion, tugging at her towel and telling her he wanted to see her naked before attempting to have intercourse with her.

The woman, then 29, had met Mendy in a nightclub in Barcelona in October 2017 along with another French footballer, Diacko Fofana, a jury at Chester crown court was told on Wednesday.

The woman, who was described by the prosecutor, Timothy Cray QC, as “the opposite of a football groupie”, told police she was introduced to Fofana and Mendy by a club promoter who offered them VIP treatment. “We don’t want to hang around in queues and stuff so we took advantage of the opportunity,” she said in a video interview played to the jury in Wednesday.

The next year, in October 2018, she agreed to meet Fofana at Mendy’s multimillion pound mansion in Mottram St Andrew, near Macclesfield in Cheshire.

That night she went out for dinner and to a few clubs in Manchester with the footballers. They were accompanied by two other women, one “very beautiful” who appeared to be with Mendy and was sitting on his lap, the jury heard.

In the interview, recorded in January this year, she described how Mendy began to show her unwanted attention in one of the clubs, touching her and saying: “When he’s [Fofana] not looking I’m going to kidnap you.”

She said she thought he was joking: “I just said ‘no, you’re not’ and took his hands off me. I said ‘I want him’, as in, I want Diacko. I made it clear that my intention was solely directed just at Diacko.”

She spent the night with Fofana but the next day was having a shower when she was accosted by Mendy, the court heard.

She described her shock when the footballer came into the bathroom wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, touching his penis and asking to see her naked. “I tried to reach for a towel, and he was saying he just wanted to see me.”

The woman managed to wrap a towel around herself and grab some underwear but Mendy snatched it off her, she said: “He just did not want me to have clothes. He kept obstructing me. I kept pushing him away, he kept grabbing me back.”

He then pulled her on to his lap on the bed before attempting to rape her, the jury heard. She described how he talked to her in French, which she could speak and understand well, saying: “I like it when you speak French. It excites me. I like it when you dance.”

She said she told him “Arr?te” (stop) as she recalled him telling her he wasn’t going to penetrate her, saying: “You don’t have to be scared … I just want to feel you, I’m not going to do anything to you, I’m not going to put it in or anything.” He then pressed his penis against her vagina as she tried repeatedly to “wriggle out of it” and keep her towel on, the jury heard.

In her video interview she described her confusion at what was happening. “I didn’t understand why for multiple reasons. He had such a pretty girl with him the night before. She was so lovely. I didn’t know what happened to her. I didn’t know what he would want with me. I was confused,” she said.

She texted a friend to tell her what had happened but only went to police in August 2021 after publicity of Mendy’s arrest for raping other women.

Mendy denies attempting to rape the woman. He denies a total of 10 rapes and sexual offences involving seven women. He is on trial with his “fixer”, Louis Saha Matturie, who denies 12 charges involving eight women.

The case continues.