Benjamin Mendy trial: Sheffield link in sex case against Manchester City and France footballer’s co-accused

Timothy Cray QC today opened the trial for the prosecution against Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy, 28, and his friend and co-accused Louis Saha Matturie, 40, of Eccles, Salford.

Mendy is accused of eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault. Matturie is accused of eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault relating to eight young women. The alleged offences span July 2012 to August last year.

Both men deny all charges.

The jury heard that central to the case is Mendy's home, described as an isolated mansion, in Mottram St Andrew in rural Cheshire.

Mr Cray said there were five dates, between October 2018 and August 2021, when nine young women arrived at Mendy's address and afterwards made complaints of rape and/or sexual assault against Mendy and Matturie.

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But there are also four separate complaints against Matturie involving allegations away from Mendy's house, in Manchester and Sheffield.

The complaint against Matturie which happened in Sheffield sees him accused of a further sexual assault against another woman, aged 18, in the South Yorkshire city in October 2016.

The jury was told that the woman had gone to an address having been invited there by a footballer when Matturie tried to kiss her and forced himself on top of her.

The prosecution says he told her to relax and enjoy it and proceeded to rub an intimate part of her body over her clothing. As she was telling him to get off, another male entered the room.

Mr Cray said: "The prosecution case is simple. It has little to do with football. Instead, we say, 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."

He told the jury at Chester Crown Court that Mendy was a "reasonably famous football player" who "because of his wealth and status, others were prepared to help him to get what he wanted". The prosecutor told jurors they will hear from 13 different women.

"Our case is that the defendants' pursuit of these 13 women turned them into predators, who were prepared to commit serious sexual offences," Mr Cray said.

The prosecutor said Matturie was Mendy's friend and fixer and one of his jobs was "to find young women and to create the situations where those young women could be raped and sexually assaulted".

He said the central question is whether the women consented to sex.

Mr Cray told jurors Mendy and Saha say in "broad terms" that all the women consented to sex, willingly with only a couple of allegations where there is a denial that anything sexual happened.

He said: "In this day and age, no one can doubt, can they, that 'no means no'.

"That's no longer some sort of grey area, or some sort of open door for a man to push through regardless."

The alleged offences span July 2012 to August last year.

The trial continues.

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