An emotional Benjamin Mendy cried today and said ‘Praise God’ after he was cleared of rape and attempted rape.
The 28-year-old former Manchester City footballer was accused of sexually assaulting two women at his £4m mansion.
He was acquitted after three hours of deliberation by a jury at Chester Crown Court this afternoon, and then collapsed on the bench before saying he was “delighted” with the not guilty verdicts.
Mendy had faced a new trial on one count of rape and one count of attempted party rape to break confinement. He is now a free man without a club after his contract with Man City expired at the end of June and he played his last game for the Premier League champions in August 2021.
The French international full-back has already been cleared of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault after a court case in January.
Mendy cried when he was acquitted. His lawyers said he would now “rebuild his life”, and now it is likely that he will return to the top flight of soccer. The emotional star refused to comment outside of court only to say: ‘Alhamdulillah’, an Arabic phrase meaning: ‘Praise God’.
French footballer Benjamin Mendy looked emotional as he left Chester Crown Court after being cleared of one count of rape and one charge of attempted rape.
Soccer player Mendy (pictured today) was found not guilty of attacking two women
Jenny Wiltshire, Director of General and Serious Crime at Hickman & Rose, said: “Benjamin Mendy would like to thank the jurors for focusing on the evidence in this trial, rather than the rumors and innuendo that have followed this case. From the beginning”. beginning.
“This is the second time that Mr. Mendy has been tried and found not guilty by a jury. He is delighted that both juries have reached the correct verdicts.
‘It has been almost 3 years since the police began to investigate this matter. Mendy has tried to stay strong, but the process has inevitably taken a serious toll on him.
“He thanks everyone who has supported him through this ordeal and now asks for privacy so he can start rebuilding his life.”
The 28-year-old French international denied being a “sexual predator” and having committed the two sexual assaults. He was acquitted after a three week trial at Chester Crown Court.
Mendy, whose contract with the Premier League champions expired on July 1, was cleared of attempting to rape a woman, 29 at the time, at his £4m mansion in Mottram St Andrew, Cheshire, in October 2018.
He was also found not guilty of the rape of a second woman, aged 24, two years later, also at his home.
Mendy met the first alleged victim at a Barcelona nightclub in October 2017 when she became ‘intimate’ with her friend Diacko Fofana, another French footballer.
The woman kept in touch with Fofana and arranged to meet him at Mendy’s mansion a year later.
The three went clubbing in Manchester with the woman who stayed with Fofana in a spare room at the property that night.
Mendy, who she said had a “predatory look on his face,” walked into her bedroom the next morning “aroused” and wearing only his boxer briefs as he showered.
The woman claimed Mendy then tied her up to rape her on the bed after she repeatedly told him ‘arrêter’, French for ‘stop’, before she could fight to free herself.
Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy speaks to the media today as he leaves Chester Crown Court after being found not guilty on one count of rape and one count of attempted rape.
Mendy, pictured here playing for Manchester City in 2020, is alleged to have attacked the women at his £4m mansion. The jury acquitted him this afternoon after three hours of deliberations
Mendy with a member of her team outside the pitch today
She told jurors she was “shocked” and confused by her ordeal and after fleeing the mansion texted a friend saying Mendy had been “sexually abused.”
But Mendy claimed that the woman had “flirted” with him before the incident and that there was only consensual sexual contact between them. “At no time was I forced or dragged onto the bed,” she said.
He claimed that the woman was only upset when he told her that Fofana had given him permission to have sex with her.
Mendy met the second woman while out with friends at a bar in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, in October 2020.
The group returned to Mendy’s home, where he took the woman’s phone and accused her of taking a photo that could be posted on social media, which could cause him more trouble after he was fined for violating Covid rules in a previous party at his house.
Mendy was said to have looked at “intimate” photos of the woman and when she followed him to retrieve her phone, he led her to his bedroom, which had a security door that locked behind her and was operated by a password.
He allegedly told the woman to get naked if she wanted her phone back before throwing it on the bed.
The woman, who was left clad only in a thong, told jurors that Mendy walked up behind her as she went to retrieve the phone and raped her, despite her repeatedly telling him she did not want to have sex.
She only stopped when she managed to sit up on the bed, she said, when Mendy accused her of being “too shy” and bragged: “Okay, I’ve had sex with 10,000 women.”
Mendy claimed that the woman was happy to go to her room where they had consensual oral sex.
Although she did not want more sex, he said, she agreed that they could “play” and have more sexual contact and he had not “forced” her before it was over.
Benjamin Aina KC, the prosecutor, told the jury that Mendy’s ‘wealth’ and ‘position in society’ meant that he was used to women saying ‘yes’ to his sexual advances and that ‘no’ was not an option. .
Mendy had an “appetite for sex, an appetite for control,” he said, and “didn’t care” about women’s feelings or views unless they coincided with his own.
“What Mr. Mendy wants, Mr. Mendy gets,” he told the jury.
Eleanor Laws KC, defending, told the jury that Mendy was not a sexual predator and that “moral judgments” about his lifestyle, which involved partying and casual sex with many different women, should be set aside.
Benjamin Mendy has won four Premier League titles at City
She said the jury had heard no evidence that he was “controlling, violent and ‘whatever Mr. Mendy wants, Mr. Mendy gets’ and doesn’t care about consent.”
Ms Laws said the women’s accounts of what happened contained “lies, inconsistencies and very strange things”.
He claimed that Mendy had not attempted to rape the first woman, while the second woman had “talked herself” into believing that she had been raped after regretting being pressured to have sex with him.
It was the second trial Mendy faces accused of sexual assault.
The soccer player was found not guilty of six rapes and a sexual assault against four women by a previous jury, which ended in January, and acquitted of a charge of rape against another woman by order of the judge.
At that trial, Mendy was acquitted of twice raping the second woman during the same incident at her home.
But the jury in the first trial could not reach a verdict on the two charges he faced in his retrial.
In all, he has now been acquitted of eight rapes, one attempted rape and one sexual assault against seven women after two trials.
