19-year-old woman ‘went back to Benjamin Mendy’s mansion 10 times despite him allegedly raping her there’

A young lady repeatedly went back to Manchester City footballer, Benjamin Mendy’s Cheshire mansion despite him allegedly raping her there, a court heard.

Jurors at Chester Crown Court on Tuesday, September 6, heard the woman claim she ‘tried to block’ the incident from her mind and that she was always with friends when she returned to the house.

Jurors were also shown footage from a Manchester nightclub showing Mendy dancing on a table, with his trousers half-way down and his top off.

A month earlier the woman, aged 19 at the time, said she was raped by Mendy after visiting the same night club, China White, and returning to his mansion in Mottram St Andrew, near Prestbury.

After allegedly spending time in the swimming pool in his house, she went to a top floor bedroom to sleep and said she woke up to see Mendy raping her in the early hours of July 24, 2021.

Under cross-examination, Eleanor Laws QC, defending Mendy, asked the woman: ‘You find it difficult to explain why you went back, not once, 10 times to a house you say you were raped in?

She replied: ‘I tried to block this out of my mind and forget about it.’

Two other alleged victims who cannot be named for legal reasons – said Mendy forced himself onto them in the master bedroom and the downstairs office of his multi-million pound mansion. Both of them had a special locking mechanism, which created a ‘panic room’ in case of burglary which can only be opened from the inside not the outside.

Mendy’s lawyer, Barrister Laws, a woman, suggested the witness’ account of what happened, waking up to find Mendy raping her, was the ‘exact same’ allegation made by her friend, who the footballer is also accused of raping the same evening.

The defence counsel showed the witness some clips from mobile phones, CCTV footage and photos of her at Mendy’s house on different days after the alleged rape, showing her enjoying herself.

The witness replied: ‘Honestly, I have no respect for you as a woman to take that off my phone and play it in front of a room full of people.’

Jurors were also shown CCTV from inside China White nightclub, at around 6am on August 23, with the woman dancing, wearing a white bikini top with Mendy also present.

The video according to Ms Laws suggested she was ‘perfectly comfortable’ in Mendy’s company.

The woman replied: ‘He was around. I was with my friend.

‘That night he was so intoxicated he was falling over tables.’

Another CCTV video from the night showed Mendy dancing on a table in the club, with his trousers half-way down and his top off.

Ms Laws told the jurors that it was normal for people to do things they would not normally do when sober when in a drunken state 

The trial also hears how Man City teammates Jack Grealish and Kyle Walker were at one of the parties held at his £4.8million mansion

Ms Laws asked: ‘You have assumed you can’t have consented?’

‘I didn’t, OK?’ the woman replied.

The woman said two or three months before the alleged rape, she had sex with Mendy, ‘like a one-night thing’ but that time she was sober and it was consensual.

Timothy Cray QC, prosecuting, asked the woman: ‘Why did you decide to tell in the end?’

 ‘I just thought it was the right thing to do, not just for myself. I’m not here to lie, I don’t want to put myself through this.’

Mr Cray continued: ‘What’s being said is, if you had been raped you would not go back to the house?’

She said Mendy was ‘very rarely’ at the house when she was present and she was never alone with him there.

Mr Cray added: ‘Why did you go back to the house in August?’

She replied: ‘I just went with friends, just… I don’t know.’

Mendy denies the rape, along with the rape of two other young women over the same 24-hour period at his home.

He also denies five other counts of rape, one attempted rape and a sexual assault, all relating to seven young women, between October 2018 and August last year.

His co-accused, Louis Saha Matturie, 41, denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault, relating to eight young women.