Premier League footballer Benjamin Mendy is a “predator” who raped women in his “isolated” Cheshire mansion and thought they were “things to be used for sex and thrown to one side”, a court heard.
Mendy, 28, is accused of eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape, and one count of sexual assault.
In one incident, Mendy allegedly took the victim’s phone from her and started looking at intimate pictures she kept on her phone. When she tried to get it back, he told her: “I’ll give you your phone back if you take your clothes off,” the court was told.
The woman stripped to her underwear and went to grab her phone when Mendy came up behind her and raped her three times despite the woman’s protests, the prosecution alleged.
On another occasion in Mendy’s Cheshire mansion, a woman had to clench her knees together to stop him from raping her, the court was told.
The Manchester City footballer is co-accused with Louis Saha Matturie, referred to in court as a “fixer who found young women for Mendy”.
Matturie, 40, is accused of eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault. Both men deny the charges against them.
One woman, who stayed over at Mendy’s house after a pool party, was allegedly woken from sleep by him raping her. When her underwear was forensically examined, DNA was found from both Mendy and Saha Matturie – despite the woman having no memory of having sex with Saha Matturie.
Prosecution lawyer Timothy Cray QC told Chester crown court that both defendants thought “the feelings and emotions of their victims counted for nothing”.
“To them, these women were disposable, things to be used for sex, thrown to one side,” Mr Cray added.
He told the court that the trial would hear from 13 different women who accuse Mendy and Saha Matturie of rape or sexual assault.
The majority of the alleged crimes happened at Mendy’s mansion in Mottram St Andrew, Cheshire from October 2019 to August 2021.
The court heard that the location and design of the house helped Mendy to isolate the women and make them more vulnerable to his advances.
“It was isolated,” Mr Cray said. “About 17 miles south of the centre of Manchester. If you turned up and you’ve never been there, with the big old gates locked behind you, you may well have felt that you were vulnerable.”
Once women arrived at the house, some of them had their phones taken off them, according to Mr Cray.
Other women were taken to rooms that they believed were locked, some were drunk, and “there is evidence the defendants wanted the women drunk”, Mr Cray continued.
Two women were kept in the study and the master bedroom before they were allegedly raped by Mendy, the trial heard. Jurors were shown a video of the doors on these rooms and told the locks could turn them into “panic rooms” if the house was burgled.
Because of the unusual security system, jurors were shown how the rooms had two handles on each door. The doors could only be opened if both handles were turned at the same time, meaning you could be trapped inside if you only pulled one handle to try and get out.
Additionally, “the difference of ages and wealth between the defendants and the women” made them vulnerable, Mr Cray said.
“The general attitude of the defendants was that any woman... once that door closed behind her, well that woman was available to sex.”
Mendy and Saha Matturie are “predators who were prepared to commit serious sexual offences” and who “would not take no for an answer”, the prosecution argued in the opening address.
“They were able to build up, create situations, where ‘No’ – to the women concerned – didn’t even seem like an option,” the court heard.
The trial was also told that one woman was assaulted when she arrived at the house to visit someone other than Mendy or Saha Matturie.
Another woman was 17 when the assault took place. To the defendants, the prosecution argued, it did not matter “whether the witness is more or less minding her own business in Mendy’s kitchen, or whether the woman was in obvious distress”.
Saha Matturie also allegedly “pretended to be someone else” during sex, the court heard.
“The girl wakes up and it’s him having sex with her, not the person she thought was in bed with her,” Mr Cray detailed.
The accused pair believed that “all these women who turned up to the address were available to them for sex”, Mr Cray said.
The trial continues.
