'Tell no one and you can come back here every night': The jury in Benjamin Mendy's UK trial for alleged rape and assault of eight women heard harrowing testimony from an alleged victim on Thursday, who said that the French international repeatedly raped her despite her repeated denials.
In a recording played at the trial in Chester, near Liverpool, the 20-year-old said she met Mendy and her friends at a bar near the footballer's home in October 2020 and agreed to go to the player's home afterward. .
At the scene, while the girl was consulting the phone, Mendy grabbed it, accusing her of having taken photos of her, according to her. She then chased him through the house, to her bedroom, the opening of which was triggered by a fingerprint. The door closed behind them.
"Look, I want my phone, I don't know what you're thinking. I don't want to have sex with you," she recalled saying. The player's response, according to her: "the door is closed anyway."
From the same source, Mendy then forced her to undress and raped her three times in about twenty minutes, despite her repeated refusals: "I don't want to do that (...) I have to go."
"My body was so tense, I was in so much pain," he recalled, saying he bled after these forced reports.
She said Mendy, after the rapes, called her 'shy', bragged about having sex with '10,000 women' and tried to get her silence in exchange for coming back the following days.
"As if it had been a privilege to come every night to do this with him," added the young woman.
"Many times I said no, that's what makes me very angry," added the woman who filed the complaint three weeks later, after speaking with her relatives and with professionals specializing in the reception of victims of sexual violence.
The day after the rapes she accuses Mendy of, the young woman said she received a Snapchat message from the player, with a series of question marks.
Benjamin Mendy is on trial along with another man, Louis Saha Matturie -not related to former soccer player Louis Saha-, prosecuted for eight rapes and four sexual assaults on eight women between July 2012 and August 2021. Like Mendy, he has been declared innocent.
The alleged victim heard Thursday that Matturie, a member of Mendy's entourage, had also written to him the next day through a message on his phone: "Are you okay? Call me, let's talk."
She did not reply, but took screenshots before blocking the numbers, according to her.
The 28-year-old French defender, suspended for one year by Manchester City, appears for eight rapes, an attempted rape and sexual assault against seven women.
The prosecution presented him as a "predator" who abused "vulnerable, terrified and isolated" victims.
The ten charges against him relate to events that allegedly took place between October 2018 and August 2021 at his home in Prestbury, Cheshire. He faces life in prison.
The highly publicized trial taking place at Chester Crown Court is expected to last more than three months.
