Benjamin Mendy 'told rape victim he had sex with 10,000 women and it was a privilege'
18 August 2022, 16:56 | Updated: 18 August 2022, 17:05
Manchester City's Benjamin Mendy told a woman he raped "it's fine, I have had sex with 10,000 women" moments after the alleged crime, a court has been told.
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The 28-year-old left back has been described by prosecutors as a "predator" who pursued women for sex as a "game", viewing them as things to be used for sex and then tossed aside.
The France international left the woman, 20, bleeding after an alleged sex assault and then told her it was a "privilege" to have sex with him, Chester Crown Court was told on Thursday.
He is alleged to have told her: "Don't tell anyone and you can come over here every night."
The woman's tearful police interview has been played to jurors. The court heard she had been out with three friends at Parea, a bar in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, on a Sunday night in October 2020.
They got to talking to three men and Mr Mendy bought drinks, then her group and more girls were invited back to his mansion in the nearby village of Mottram St Andrew.
She sat next to his indoor swimming pool and was on her phone when Mr Mendy came over and said she could be "fined" hundreds of thousands of pounds as he claimed she was taking photos of him.
He said he would check the phone, which was unlocked, then started going through her private pictures, before she followed him through a fingerprint touchscreen-operated door into a bedroom and the door shut, the court heard.
She said she told Mr Mendy that she wanted her phone back and did not want sex, but he said the door "is locked anyway".
"He said, 'Just wait a minute'. He then said, 'If you just take your clothes off, I just want to look at you. I promise. I just want to see your tits, your tits are so big'," she said.
She told police she thought getting undressed would be "the lesser of two evils" so she stripped down to her underwear and said she wanted to go, but he threw her phone on the bed and as she went to get it he pushed her onto the bed.
She added: "He was holding my love handles and I was saying, 'No, I really don't want to have sex with you'. Then he moved my thong to one side."
Mr Mendy raped her three times in the next 20 minutes, and she told him "I don't want to do that. I don't want to have sex with you. I need to go", the court heard.
She told the court: "My body was so tense. It was just this pain."
He told her after that she was too shy and made the claim about having sex with thousands of women, the court heard.
"It was like a privilege to come over to have that done every night by him," she told police.
She left the house and the next day at work a colleague asked if she was alright before she began crying.
The woman added: "What makes me really upset is how many times I said no."
She went to the police about three weeks later after speaking to her mother, sister and a sexual assault referral centre.
She got a Snapchat message from Mendy with a series of question marks.
His co-accused Saha Matturie, 41, alleged to be a fixer who would find young women for sex, sent one saying: "Are you OK? Please can you call me so we can discuss?" She took screenshots and blocked their numbers.
Mr Mendy denies eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault against seven young women, while Mr Matturie, of Eccles in Salford, denies denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault relating to eight young women. They both claim any sex was consensual.
The trial continues.
