World Cup and Premier League winner Benjamin Mendy raped women in locked 'panic rooms', jury told

Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy abused his wealth and fame to lure women back to his gated Cheshire home and rape them, a jury at Chester crown court heard on Monday. The 28-year-old French international defender raped women in locked "panic rooms" in his isolated mansion from which they believed they could not escape, the court heard.

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The sexual assault should take place when the women either said no or were too drunk to consent, the Guardian reported.

Not just Mendy, even his "fixer", Louis Saha Matturie, 41, known as Saha, is also on trial alongside the footballer and is charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault.

The court heard that the Premier League winner used to meet many of the women in Manchester nightclubs, often with the help of his "fixer".

The duo have been accused of showing "callous indifference" to 13 young women they allegedly attacked. The court also heard that their sexual conquest of young women became "a game".

Prosecutor, Timothy Cray, while opening the case told the jury that Mendy was a "reasonably famous" footballer at the time of the offences as he had won the World Cup with the French national team. 

"The prosecution case is simple," Timothy Cray told. "It has little to do with football. Instead, we say, it is another chapter in a very old story: men who rape and sexually assault women, because they think they are powerful, and because they think they can get away with it.

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"These days fame brings attention. Fame also brings money. And because of this, Mendy's wealth and status, others were prepared to help him to get what he wanted," said Cray.

Cray also spoke about Saha and said his job was "to find young women and to create the situations where those young women could be raped and sexually assaulted".

Talking about an incident, in July 2021, the jury heard that Saha had offered to pay a woman to attend a party at Mendy's home with a friend – instead of working a shift at a nightclub.

The woman later told police that Mendy had raped her in his cinema room without using a condom. She added that two of Mendy's associates had blocked her friend when she went to look for her.

Cray said, "These women were disposable: things to be used for sex, then thrown to one side".

Two women even told police that they were "passed between" both the men at Mendy's multimillion-pound mansion. Some women even told police that their phones were taken off them on arrival.

"I imagine that Mendy did not want Pep Guardiola to see him out late on Instagram with a load of girls," Cray said and later added that it also left them unable to call for help.

Cray alleged that taking women to Mendy's mansion was a means of being "able to gain control over their victims".

"It was isolated, or so many of the witnesses thought, and once they were there, with the gates locked behind them - they felt vulnerable," he added, according to Sky News.

According to Cray, both men knew what they were doing. He said. "They were not in some happy state of sexual ignorance about how this all works – they knew very well what they were doing. They turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game, in effect, and if women got hurt or distressed – too bad. Make it go away."

He added: "In this day and age, no one can doubt, can they, to use the common saying, that "no means no'? That's no longer some sort of grey area, or some sort of an open door for a man to push through regardless … You don't lose that right because you've been to a bar or dressed for a nightclub or gone to a footballer's house and you are partying."

The trial, which is scheduled to last 15 weeks, continues.