The Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy has been found not guilty of raping four women and sexually assaulting another during alcohol-fuelled parties at his Cheshire mansion.
Mendy, who appeared close to tears in the court dock, had been accused of being a “predator” who turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game during parties, some held during Covid lockdowns, at his £4.8m home. But he told jurors that the women who accused him of rape had all wanted to have sex with him. He denied groping the woman who claimed he had sexually assaulted her in his kitchen.
Mendy’s co-defendant, Louis Saha Matturie, who had been described as the footballer’s “fixer”, broke down in tears as he was found not guilty of three charges of rape involving two women. The jury was unable to reach verdicts on six other counts against the 41-year-old: four alleged rapes against three women and the alleged sexual assault of two women. He will go on trial for those charges in the week commencing 18 September.
The six women had accused him of assaulting them at his gated mansion between October 2018 and August 2021, often at illegal parties held during lockdowns. Several weeks into the trial, the judge ordered the jury to find both Mendy and Matturie not guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman, after a video emerged showing her having “enthusiastic and obviously consensual sex” with Matturie.
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