In some ways, the trial of Benjamin Mendy was not complex. Even the prosecution barrister, Timothy Cray KC, said it was “the opposite of a whodunnit”. For all of the rape charges the Manchester City footballer faced, both sides agreed that sexual activity had taken place. The question was: did the women consent?
On charges relating to four of his accusers, the jury decided unanimously that he was not guilty of rape and sexual assault. They could not reach verdicts on two outstanding counts, of attempting to rape one woman and of raping another.
Eleanor Laws KC, defending Mendy, sought to persuade the jury that while her client had made “monumental mistakes” and behaved in a “callous” and “morally dubious” way, “this was not a court of morals”.
None of the sex took place in stable, loving relationships, she said, and there was “no aftercare”. She told the jury she wouldn’t want her daughter to attend one of Mendy’s parties; but that didn’t make him guilty of rape.
What they were considering during the five-month trial were one-night stands, often lasting just a few minutes, she said. And therein lay the risk: “Quick, animal-like sex can, I’m afraid, become complicated.”
Though the jury was repeatedly told there was no “right” way for a victim to behave, Laws focused a lot on what the women said and did after the alleged rapes. Some of the women whom Mendy was ultimately cleared of raping sent messages to friends expressing what Laws described as “unbridled joy and giddiness” about the night they’d just had. They then “reframed” their narrative after Mendy’s arrest was made public, Laws suggested.
The defence also suggested that at least some of those women deliberately went out to meet footballers. They were “hoping for a sprinkle of stardust”, Laws said.
One of Mendy’s accusers, Woman 5, returned to his home 15 times after the alleged attack, the court heard. The jury found him not guilty of raping Woman 5.
Mendy said the pair had brief, consensual sex after he had sex with one of her friends earlier that evening. Giving evidence, the former French international said they stopped having sex when he realised she was bleeding and had her period. The woman had claimed he removed her tampon to rape her.
Mendy told the jury that they ended on good terms and that he then went to have sex again with her friend. He said that when he went to training the next morning, he returned to find both women playing table tennis happily. When she gave evidence, Woman 5 became angry at Laws’ questioning, calling her “a disgrace to womankind”.
Mendy was also cleared of raping Woman 4, who met Mendy on what the prosecution called “the Manchester scene”.
The evening after she alleged that Mendy raped her in his cinema room, Woman 4 was seen hugging him at a Manchester nightclub, Chinawhite. The jury was shown CCTV footage of her approaching the footballer and dancing suggestively into him.
The defence focused particularly on one clip, where the woman could be seen posing for a photograph, apparently punching the air. The jury was told that the resulting photo was posted by a friend on social media. The caption read: “She shagged a pro footballer.”
Giving evidence, Mendy described meeting Woman 4 for the first time in his kitchen at one of his many house parties a few days earlier. He claimed that immediately after saying hello to her, “I asked her to show me her bum”. She obliged by hitching up her short dress, he said.
A few days later, Woman 4 agreed to attend a party at Mendy’s on 23 July 2021. Mendy said that after giving her a tour of the house he asked her to have sex. He told the jury that she initially said no “because she wanted to be in a relationship”, but that she changed her mind after he went to leave the room, grabbing his hands and pulling him back to her.
Another woman told police Mendy and his friend Louis Saha Matturie, who was described in court as the footballer’s “fixer”, had both raped her at another house party the next day, on 24 July 2021. All charges relating to her were dropped mid-trial on the judge’s orders after a video emerged of her having “enthusiastic and obviously consensual sex” with Matturie.
“What you have seen in this case is a real life… liar,” Laws said in her closing speech. “Someone who has made a serious criminal sexual allegations against two men and you have watched it play out, unusually, in front of your very eyes.”
Ultimately, the jury listened to the evidence and decided, after 14 days of deliberations, that there was enough “reasonable doubt” to acquit the footballer on most of the charges. He will face a retrial on the two outstanding counts on 26 June.
