“My body was so tense, I was in a lot of pain.” The jury at Benjamin Mendy’s trial in the United Kingdom heard on Thursday August 18 the poignant testimony of a young woman, who claimed to have been raped several times by the French international despite her repeated refusals.
In a recording played at the trial in Chester, near Liverpool, the 20-year-old said she met Mendy and friends at a bar near the footballer’s home in October 2020 and agreed to go there afterwards. On the spot, while she was consulting her phone, the Manchester City player took it, accusing her of having taken photos of him, according to her.
She then chased him into the house, to his bedroom, the opening of which was triggered by 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: “Anyway, the door is locked”.
From the same source, Benjamin 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 this (…) I have to leave.” She said that she bled after these forced reports. She assured that the footballer, after the rapes, called her a “shy”had boasted of having had relations with “10,000 women” and had tried to obtain his silence in exchange for a return the following days. “As if it had been a privilege to come every night to do this with him.”
“I said no a lot of times, that’s what really makes me angry.”
She then filed a complaint three weeks later, after speaking to her relatives and to professionals specializing in the reception of victims of sexual violence. The day after the rapes of which she accuses Mendy, the young woman said she received a Snapchat message from the player, with a series of question marks.
The footballer’s defense, which ensures that the relationship was consented to, read several messages from the young woman written during the evening on Thursday. “I hang out with footballers”, she wrote in a text message that evening, according to Benjamin Mendy’s lawyer, along with the following message: “If I ever get pregnant, it will be tonight.”
The 28-year-old French defender, who pleaded not guilty, is appearing for eight rapes, an attempted rape and a sexual assault against seven women. The prosecution presented him as a “predator” having abused victims “vulnerable, terrified and isolated”. The ten counts against him relate to events that allegedly took place between October 2018 and August 2021 at his home in Prestbury, Cheshire. He faces life imprisonment. The highly publicized trial is expected to last more than three months.