A woman looked ‘terrified’ and ‘like she had seen a ghost’ after allegedly being raped by ex-Manchester City star Benjamin Mendy, a jury heard today.
The woman, who was aged 24 at the time, was allegedly assaulted by the footballer during a Covid-era party at his mansion in October 2020.
French international Mendy, 28, is on trial at Chester Crown Court and denies a charge of rape and one of attempted rape relating to another woman.
The jury has previously heard how the woman was one of a group of four friends who were invited back to Mendy’s house after they met him at a bar in nearby Alderley Edge.
Giving evidence, one of her friends described how they had to gone to the bar because one of the group knew one of Mendy’s male companions but she hadn’t wanted to go the party at the footballer’s home because she ‘got a bad feeling’.
A woman looked ‘terrified’ and ‘like she had seen a ghost’ after allegedly being raped by ex-Manchester City star Benjamin Mendy (pictured arriving at Chester Crown Court today), a jury heard today
The friend described Mendy’s companion as ‘rude, bossy and controlling’ and ‘not the kind of person I like to be around’ – leaving her feeling ‘uncomfortable’.
She said the atmosphere in the bar, where former Manchester United star Jesse Lingard had also arrived and people were dancing, as ‘OK’ but she had wanted to go home.
Mendy, she said, took a liking to another girl in their group.
‘He kept picking her up and spinning her around. He wouldn’t leave her alone,’ he said.
There was a discussion about a party at Mendy’s home, she said, and whether she and her friends should go, but she’d wanted to go home because she felt uncomfortable.
‘I just got a bad feeling,’ she said.
‘I didn’t want to go, I wanted to go home.’
The friend, who driving the group of friends around that night, said Mendy’s alleged victim had also not wanted to go to the party.
But she eventually agreed to go as the girl Mendy had taken a liking to wanted to and she didn’t want to be a ‘party pooper’.
When they arrived at the player’s mansion, his companion ordered them to hand over their phones.
But she said she refused because she was in the ‘middle of nowhere and anything can happen’ so put it in her bra.
Inside the group moved to the downstairs pool area of the house and she described how Mendy ‘snatched’ the phone of his alleged victim, who had also kept hers, to check she wasn’t posting anything on social media.
She watched as Mendy walked of with the phone as her friend followed, trying ‘to get it back’.
French international Mendy (pictured), 28, is on trial at Chester Crown Court and denies a charge of rape and one of attempted rape relating to another woman
The friend said became concerned when the woman failed to return after 15-20 minutes so she went to look for her upstairs.
When she found the woman, near the staircase, she looked ‘terrified’, the jury heard.
‘She looked like she had seen a ghost.’
The woman asked if they could ‘go now’ and when her friend said she wanted to get her shoes was told: ‘Leave the shoes, let’s just go.’
They then left in her car, along with two others, although another friend, who Mendy had taken a liking to a the bar, decided to stay at the party.
The friend described how the woman seemed ‘quiet’ on the way home, instead of being her ‘happy, chatty, bubbly’ self, but just assumed she was tired.
At the start of the trial, the jury was told Mendy was cleared off raping the woman twice after he was acquitted in January of a string of sex attacks.
In total, he was found not guilty of six rapes and one sexual assault against four women.
But the jury in his previous trial could not reach verdicts on the two outstanding charges he still faces.
The trial – expected to last up to three weeks – continues.
