During the trial of the French defender, accused of eight rapes, an attempted rape and a sexual assault, the first victims testified, describing a system trapping young women at home.
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First “a huge grid”, which operated automatically on a large residence “lost in the middle of nowhere”. Then a “very modern” decor, with a lot of wood. In the basement, the swimming pool, a gym and a cinema. Upstairs, bedrooms, with an interior locking system that allows you to barricade yourself in the event of an attack. Listening to one of his alleged victims, who testified Thursday, August 18, it was in this luxury villa that the trap set by Benjamin Mendy closed.
It’s been four days since the French footballer’s trial began at the Tribunal de Chester, in the north of England. The former French international is accused of eight rapes, an attempted rape and a sexual assault on seven different women, between 2018 and 2021. During these first days of hearing, the prosecutor presented the accusation against the defender of 28 years old, suspended for a year by Manchester City. The first testimonies of the complainants also started.
According to the prosecutor Timothy Cray, Mr. Mendy was a “predator”, who had set up a system to systematically bring young women home. The tank task returned to Louis Saha Matturie (no link with footballer Louis Saha), his friend, to whom he paid an apartment in Manchester. The latter is also accused of eight rapes and four sexual assaults in eight women.
“say no was not a possibility”
The objective of the two men was to start the party with these young women – average age at the time of the facts, 20 years and 9 months – in a bar or a Manchester box, before inviting them to M. Mendy to The countryside south of the city, when they were sometimes already drunk. “The house was in a rural path, without public lighting, recalls Mr. Cray. The nearest village was Prestbury, fifteen minutes on foot. The isolated location and the impossibility of going elsewhere reinforced the The impression of witnesses to feel trapped or isolated. “Once there, their phone was confiscated, officially to prevent photos from the star from leaking. Then MM. Mendy and matturia “did not accept that they are said to them, or made situations where to say no was not a possibility”, continues the prosecutor.
Thursday, the complainant “A” (none of them can be named, as is systematically the case in the rape trials in the United Kingdom) told how she found herself in herself in this situation. One Sunday evening in October 2020, one of his friends invited her to a trendy Manchester bar. Mr. Mendy, whom she did not know, was there, as well as other footballers. On her phone, she then sends a message to a friend, evoking the sentence of a song, “a footballer for winter”, that is to say the possibility of having a football player as a boyfriend.
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