Manchester City’s Benjamin Mendy is on trial accused of raping women at his “isolated mansion” home.
Image source, EPAThe trial of Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy is “another chapter in a very old story” of rape and sexual assault on women, a jury has heard.
The 28-year-old is accused of eight counts of rape, one of attempted rape and one of sexual assault.
Opening the case, Timothy Cray QC said it had “very little to do with football” and was more about men who “think they are powerful”.
He said the alleged victims were “disposable” to Mr Mendy.
Chester Crown Court heard the offences against seven young women are alleged to have taken place at Mr Mendy’s home between October 2018 and August 2021.
The French international, of Prestbury, Cheshire, is on trial alongside co-defendant Louis Saha Matturie, 41.
The pair, who appeared in court assisted by a French translator, deny all the allegations.
Mr Cray said: “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.”
Image source, PA Media
The prosecutor said the feeling of the alleged victims “counted for nothing”.
He continued: “These women were disposable: things to be used for sex, then thrown to one side.
“That was the effect of deliberate, planned choices the defendants made, and the desires they let loose many times.”
He said due to Mr Mendy’s “wealth and status, others were prepared to help him to get what he wanted”.
Mr Cray said Mr Saha was his friend and fixer, and he would “find young women and to create the situations where those young women could be raped and sexually assaulted”.
He said: “The acts that the defendants did together show callous indifference to the women they went after.
“In their minds, and this could not be clearer, the stream of women they brought to their homes existed purely to be pursued for sex.”
‘Isolated mansion’
Mr Cray continued: “Our case is that the defendants’ pursuit of these 13 women turned them into predators, who were prepared to commit serious sexual offences.”
He said: “the fact they would not take ‘no’ for an answer” would be something the jurors will “hear time and time again”.
The court heard how Mr Mendy’s home, The Spinney, in Mottram St Andrew in rural Cheshire, was “part and parcel” of how he and Mr Saha were able to abuse their alleged victims.
Mr Cray said nine young women arrived at the address and afterwards made complaints of rape and, or sexual assault against the defendants between 2018 and 2021.
There are also four separate complaints against Mr Saha involving allegations away from Mendy’s house, in Manchester and Sheffield.
The victims were vulnerable for a number of reasons once arriving at the house, which was described as an isolated mansion, the jury was told.
The court heard how victims said they had their mobile phones taken away, while some victims believed they were in locked rooms.
Mr Cray said the victims were also vulnerable due to the differences in ages and wealth between the defendants and the complainants.
“Vulnerable, scared, isolated – these are words you’ll hear from lots of the witnesses,” he told the jury.
“Ask yourselves, as you get under the skin of what was happening, who had the power and control in the situations these women experienced and you will hear about?”
