A young woman “looked like she had seen a ghost” moments after emerging from a bedroom where footballer Benjamin Mendy allegedly raped her three times, her friend has told a court.
The friend said she went to look for the 20-year-old, who she regarded “like a sister”, after she had gone missing with Mendy for around 20 minutes during a party at the Manchester City star's mansion in Cheshire.
Mendy, 28, is accused of eight counts of rape, one count of sexual assault and one count of attempted rape and is facing a trial 15-week trial in Chester Crown Court. He denies the charges.
The witness told Chester Crown Court she found her friend coming downstairs from an upstairs bedroom. Timothy Cray QC, prosecuting Mendy, asked the friend: “How did she look to you?”
The witness replied: “She looked like she had seen a ghost. She looked blank. She looked dead.”
Moments later, the rape complainant told her friend she was “very keen” to leave and go home, the trial heard. When they got to her home, the 20-year-old told her friend she was “fine” and tried “brushing off” the incident, the witness said. But she also talked about “being in a situation where you don't want to do something, feel pressured so you just go along with something”, the friend told the jury.
She said that the morning after, the complainant said Mendy had promised not to touch her if she stripped while he looked at her, but he then “forced” her down on a bed and raped her.
Earlier, the court heard both young women had been among a group of four friends who went back to Mendy's home in Mottram St Andrew, Cheshire, after drinks at a nearby bar on 11 October 2020.
The girls had been told not to use their phones at Mendy's home due to sensitivities to social media photos and posts and worries about gatherings during the Covid pandemic.
The 20-year-old woman had been scrolling through her phone near a swimming pool when Mendy “snatched” the phone from her to check if she had been taking pictures and posting them to social media, the court has been told.
She said she asked for it back but the footballer led her to an upstairs bedroom where the alleged sex attack took place, despite her telling him she did not want sex.
The court heard the Manchester City defender also told the alleged victim he had slept with 10,000 women. The Frenchman made the boast after allegedly raping the woman in a bedroom.
The woman – the first of seven to go to the police to accuse the footballer of rape or sexual assault – said she believed she had been locked in the room after Mendy told her she could not get out and promised to give her phone back if she stripped naked.
During the trial, prosecutors have alleged Mendy is a “predator” who “turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game”.
Mendy denies eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault against seven young women.
His co-accused Louis Saha Matturie, 41, the footballer's friend and fixer, is alleged to have had the job of finding young women for sex.
Matturie, of Eccles, Salford, denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault relating to eight young women.
Both men say if any sex did take place with women or girls it was consensual.
The trial continues.
