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Benjamin Mendy boasted he’d had sex with ‘10,000 women’ after raping victim, court hears

Benjamin Mendy - David Rawcliffe/PA Wire
Benjamin Mendy - David Rawcliffe/PA Wire

Benjamin Mendy, the Manchester City footballer, boasted that “I have had sex with 10,000 women” as he raped a woman he had lured to his secure bedroom, a court has heard.

The France international, 28, is alleged to have launched the attack after inviting a group of women he had just met to his mansion in rural Cheshire in October 2020.

Mr Mendy is on trial at Chester Crown Court accused of eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault, relating to seven complainants. He denies the charges.

Pre-recorded evidence from one of the complainants – accounting for three of the rape charges – was played to the jury on Thursday.

She told the police officer conducting the interview that she had not really been drinking while out at the bar because she had work the next day and did not want to be hungover.

Jesse Lingard, then a Manchester United footballer, had also been at the bar in Manchester that night but was not with Mr Mendy, the court heard.

The complainant’s friend, who was also not drinking, drove the group to Mr Mendy’s mansion after a member of his entourage told the women there was a party happening.

Upon arrival, she went and sat downstairs next to Mr Mendy’s “massive” heated pool and was confronted by the footballer when he saw she was using her phone, the court heard.

Louis Saha Matturie - David Rawcliffe/PA Wire
Louis Saha Matturie - David Rawcliffe/PA Wire

Mr Mendy allegedly grabbed her phone and said he was going to check she had not taken any photos of his house because he could be fined £200,000 if the club saw any pictures. He then darted upstairs while looking at her Snapchat images, which had “private” pictures on it.

The woman described reaching Mr Mendy’s bedroom, which the jury previously heard was one of the “panic rooms” in his house and can only be opened from the outside using a fingerprint scanner, with a different mechanism to open it from the inside.

He told the woman they were locked in the room and, despite her repeatedly telling him she did not want to have sex and needed to leave, said she could only go if she got undressed so he could look at her body, the court heard.

The woman told the court: “I was so scared, I was thinking ‘how the f--- do I get out of this situation?’. I don’t know who he is, where I am, I don’t know if he has a knife or a gun – I felt it was the lesser of two evils to get undressed then he would let me go.”

She undressed down to her underwear and Mr Mendy threw her phone on the bed. Mr Mendy then raped the woman and forced her to perform oral sex on him before she could wrestle herself free, the jury was told.

“He said ‘you’re too shy’ and I said ‘I’m not shy, I don’t want to have sex with you’,” she told police. “He said ‘it’s fine, I have had sex with 10,000 women, it’s ok’.”

According to the woman, Mr Mendy then said: “Don’t tell anyone and you can come here every night.”

‘I don’t know how this has happened to me’

The woman quickly got dressed and left with her friends, around 40 minutes after they first arrived at 11.10pm, before confiding in friends and family about her alleged ordeal the following day, the court heard.

The woman recounted a conversation with her mother about the incident in which she said to her: “I don’t know what to do, but I don’t feel OK about it – I’m a grown woman and I don’t know how this has happened to me.”

The woman claimed she then received a message from Mr Mendy on Snapchat, as well as a member of his entourage.

She said: “When he had my phone he added him and this manager guy (who was also at the mansion that evening).

“I had a message from Benjamin on Snapchat and the manager guy. I slid the message from Ben (half-open, so he could not see it had been read) and it had a load of question marks.

“The manager guy said something like, ‘are you ok, please can you call me so we can discuss?’. I just blocked them.”

Under cross-examination by Eleanor Laws QC in court on Thursday afternoon, the woman was asked about a message she had sent to her best friend on the night of the alleged incident, after telling her she was sitting with footballers in a bar.

The message said: “If I’m ever going to get pregnant it’s going to be tonight.”

The woman told the court: “I was just having a joke with my best friend, that was it.”

‘I didn’t want to make a scene’

Questioned about the alleged rapes, the woman was asked why she did not yell out when she thought she was locked in Mr Mendy’s room.

She broke down in tears as she said: “He already told me I would not be able to get out at this point, because I didn’t want to make a scene - that is when I realised I was in a room with somebody I don’t know, I felt that was my only choice.”

The woman then told the court that, after Mr Mendy had made his comment about sleeping with 10,000 women, he added: “It is sort of a privilege.”

Ms Laws suggested to the woman that Mr Mendy did not make the remark at all.

Breaking down again, the woman insisted she remembered it very clearly, adding: “It is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me.”

In total, Mr Mendy and Louis Saha Matturie are alleged to have committed offences against 13 women.

The offences involving Mr Mendy are alleged to have taken place between October 2018 and August last year, including three alleged rapes in the space of 24 hours in July 2021.

His co-defendant Mr Matturie, 40, of Eccles, Salford, denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault relating to eight young women. The alleged offences span from July 2012 to August last year.

The trial continues.