Benjamin Mendy will know the verdict in his trial and risk life.
[Mis à jour le 12 janvier à 14h26] After several weeks of trial in England, Benjamin Mendy is now awaiting the verdict. Ten charges weigh on the footballer who pleads not guilty for each of them: eight charges of rape, one for attempted rape and one for sexual assault. The alleged facts would have taken place between October 2018 and August 2021 in the mansion of Benjamin Mendy, located forty-five minutes from Manchester, the club for which he played at the time. He appears alongside another man, Louis Saha Matturie. Close to Benjamin Mendy, he himself is accused of eight rapes and four sexual assaults. Both men face life imprisonment.
But against all expectations, when they began their deliberation on December 5, the eleven jurors in charge of the trial have still not managed to deliver a unanimous verdict on the fate of Benjamin Mendy and Louis Saha Matturie on time. where we write these few lines. To get a quick result, the Chester Court judge announced on Wednesday January 11 that he would accept a majority decision.
Prosecutor Timothy Cray detailed the charges against the footballer and against Louis Saha on Monday August 15, 2022 at the start of the trial. He presented the two men as “predators ready to commit serious sexual abuse”, according to France news. The seven alleged victims of Benjamin Mendy were described by the prosecutor as “vulnerable, terrified and isolated” women. Louis Saha Matturie, co-accused in this trial, is presented as a “beater”. He was responsible for “finding young women and creating situations where they could be raped and sexually assaulted”, details the prosecutor. Louis Saha Matturie is also accused of eight rapes and four sexual assaults.
Most of the charges against Benjamin Mendy would have taken place in his mansion, in which the player organized parties. Upon arrival, some young women report having their mobile phones confiscated, reports The Parisian. Some say they were locked up in a kind of “panic room”. These survival rooms are used by homeowners to take refuge in the event of burglary or intrusion. In an article from Guardian, it is explained that the two women who say they were raped in these rooms thought they were locked up. “You cannot enter from the outside, but you can open them from the inside if you know how to do it”, explains the prosecutor. However, only the footballer could do it.
The charges against Benjamin Mendy became known in August 2021. At the time, the footballer was accused of four rapes and a sexual assault by three people. Since then, seven complainants have come forward. The Manchester player was then placed in pre-trial detention and imprisoned in Altcourse prison, near Liverpool. Due to his notoriety and a high rate of assaults in this establishment, the footballer was transferred to Strangeways prison in December 2021. Released on bail in January 2022, Benjamin Mendy has since been subject to judicial review: his passport has been taken away from him and he must check in daily at the police station. Following the charges against Benjamin Mendy, the Manchester City club, in which he played, suspended him. The player still remains linked to the Mancunian group until 2023.
The French footballer pleads not guilty and denies the ten counts of sexual offenses against him. After several weeks of hearings marked by the hearings of the various complainants, the defense was able to speak later in early November during a trial that lasted more than three months. During the presentation of the facts by the court prosecutor, Benjamin Mendy “remained impassive”, reported France news in August. Serene since the start of his trial, he assures us that all the relationships were agreed. The two men “have shown no emotion since the start of their trial”, according to The Parisian.
On Wednesday August 17, 2022, a first complainant was heard. Her testimony was recorded by the police and then broadcast during the trial in order to preserve the woman’s anonymity and so that she did not have to go to court. For more than an hour and a half, she recounted an evening in October 2018 during which, after drinking games in a restaurant, Benjamin Mendy allegedly told her “when he turns his back, I will kidnap you”, reports The Parisian. The young woman first believes in a joke. She then went to the player’s home, where she fell asleep while drunk. When she wakes up, she explains how the football player would have entered the bathroom, while she was taking a shower and that he would not have come out, despite her repeated requests. After showing her his penis, preventing her from taking her underwear, he seated her on a bed in an attempt to rape her. “I didn’t understand what was going on,” she testifies, explaining that she did not shout, because she was flabbergasted. Confused, she manages to leave the mansion and sends a text message to a friend to inform her of what had just happened. The young woman filed a complaint in August 2021, after learning that Benjamin Mendy had been arrested for rape.
Thursday, August 18, a second complainant was heard in court. She accuses Benjamin Mendy of raping her three times at a party in October 2020. After meeting the footballer at a bar, she and her friends were invited to his mansion for a night out. Arriving there, the woman has her phone confiscated by the player. After following him to a room to pick him up, she says the footballer asked her to undress so she could get her phone. According to statements reported by France news, she reportedly said, “I want my phone, I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t want to have sex with you.” Benjamin Mendy would then have answered him “in any case the door is locked”. To enter the room, the player would have unlocked the door with his fingerprint. The woman then tells how the footballer would have raped her three times in about twenty minutes and claims to have bled after these reports. Before leaving the room, Benjamin Mendy would have asked him: “Don’t tell anyone and you can come here every night”, details BFM-TV. “As if it had been a privilege to come every night to do this with him,” asserts the complainant. She filed a complaint three weeks after the incident.
On Tuesday August 23, the third complainant and alleged victim in the Benjamin Mendy case testified. She says she went with a friend to a party at Benjamin Mendy’s mansion on January 2, 2021 around midnight and said that “at three in the morning, I was walking to the island and he was coming back that way. He kinda grabbed my vulva.” The gesture would have been furtive but sufficient to violate the privacy of the complainant who specifies: “I was wearing underwear but I could feel his fingers inside my vagina”. According to the complainant, the scene continues in the toilets where the young woman thinks of taking refuge and smoking a cigarette: “I was going to the toilets but the door was locked. He came to open the door and I entered the bathroom. baths. We were face to face and he made a gesture to give me oral sex. I turned around, my friend came and I told her what had happened, “she continues.
The evening continued in the presence of the young woman and her friend, both too “drunk” to hit the road. The witness admits having continued to drink and having spent the evening by the swimming pool while “keeping his distance” from the footballer. He would have come to speak to him asking him the reason for his anger and apologizing in stride: “He said he was really sorry and that he did not want to make me feel uncomfortable. He was almost childish” . The complainant evokes a new and final exchange with Benjamin Mendy around six o’clock in the morning to find spare business for the young woman. “We went upstairs and he gave me the clothes. He asked me if I wanted underwear and I said ‘yes’. I asked him to leave the room while I walked away. was dressing and he did it immediately.”
The complainant who testified at the trial on Wednesday August 24 accuses Benjamin Mendy of having raped her during a party at her mansion near Manchester in August 2021. The young woman admits having gone to the home on her own. of the player and joining the man in a room at his request later that evening. “We ended up kissing and he lowered his pants” explains the alleged victim who adds that he immediately made the footballer understand his desire not to have sex with him. She specifies that she has not consumed alcohol and that she is fully conscious when she repeats her non-consent several times. She adds that she used several excuses such as not taking contraception or the fact that they did not know each other at the insistence of Benjamin Mendy. According to the complainant, a non-consensual sexual relationship would then have taken place despite her refusal: “I did not know what to do at that time, I had given all possible excuses to get out of this situation”. “I had to get on all fours. He was behind, with his hand on my back. […] It wasn’t long, within 20 seconds and it was over”, details the young woman, describing the rape before adding: “During the whole time that it lasted, he knew that I did not want that. He kept coming over and insisting, there was nothing else I could do.”
In her testimony, the plaintiff adds that after the alleged rape, she joined her friend who would have been prevented from coming to join her by two friends of Benjamin Mendy. She says she was traumatized after the fact and felt “dirty” and “ashamed”. Benjamin Mendy, he would have returned to her by messages to ask her to join him, invitations all declined.
In the United Kingdom, rape is not qualified in the same way as in France. Across the Channel, it is considered that there is rape when an individual (A) “intentionally penetrates the vagina, the anus or the mouth of an individual (B) with his penis without B consenting to this penetration and that A does not reasonably believe that B consents to it”, explains 20 minutes. The notion of consent may be questioned. In British justice, the plaintiffs are not at the heart of the trial. Finally, in the United Kingdom, the sentences are cumulative and a rape can be punished by four years in prison to life. Prosecuted for eight rapes, Benjamin Mendy could, if found guilty, end his life in prison.
In an article published in September 2021 in the Parisian, several of his relatives explain who Benjamin Mendy is, beyond what the general public knows and regret that no one has been able to put him back on the right track. “Ben comes from a poor family,” explains goalkeeper father Brice Samba, who took the young man under his roof for six months in Le Havre. “His parents, now deceased, never had much influence on him. Only his older brother, David, tried to substitute for his parents in an attempt to frame him, but he ended up giving up (.. .) As soon as he earned some money from football, in Le Havre, Benjamin bought clothes from the Louis Vuitton brand. It was his way of standing out. Then, in Marseille, it was is accelerated with money, notoriety and bad company (…) Benjamin’s main problem is that no one around him has been able to put him back on the right track, “says Brice Samba Senior .