Benjamin Mendy: luxury house used by Man City footballer as place to assault women, court trial hears

Manchester City Footballer Benjamin Mendy used a “fixer” to find young women and create situations where they could be raped, a court heard.

Mendy, 28, and his co-accused Louis Saha Matturie are said to have plied their victims with drink and took their mobile phones away, leaving them vulnerable and isolated.

Chester Crown Court heard how Mendy and Matturie, 40, used an isolated luxury “mansion” and inner-city flat to rape multiple women as young as 17.

The French left-back denies eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape, one count of sexual assault, relating to 13 women, between October 2018 and August last year.

Jurors were told that the former World Cup winner turned his pursuit of young women into a “game” and “engineered” sexual scenarios where they felt “no” wasn’t an option.

Timothy Cray QC, prosecuting, said some of the women who were brought to the footballer’s country pile, called The Spinney, in Cheshire, had their phones taken away from them.

He also said they believed that at times the rooms they were kept in were “locked”, with their alleged attackers wanting them to be “drunk”.

And he added that once the door of the luxury property, located 17 miles away from Manchester City Centre, had slammed shut, the men saw the woman as “available for sex”.

Mr Cray said: “The general attitude of them was that any woman who heard the gates of ‘The Spinney’ or the door of the flat in Manchester, that door close behind her, well that woman was available for sex.

“Our case is that the defendants’ pursuit of these 13 women turned them into predators, who were prepared to commit serious sexual offences.”

“The fact [was] that they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Mr Cray, QC, told the jury on Monday that Matturie acted as Mendy’s friend and fixer, and was used by him to procure “young women”.

He explained that Matturie had used in a city centre apartment in Manchester, and he had used that residence to find young women who could be raped and sexually assaulted.

He said: “Saha, the second defendant, was a helper and a friend of Mendy and also is ‘fixer.’ Saha had a flat in Manchester that Mendy paid for...they were very close.

“The allegations show that one of Saha’s jobs for Mendy was to find young women and to create the situations where those young women could be raped and sexually assaulted.”

Mr Cray said nine women alleged they were either raped or sexually assaulted at Mendy’s mansion in Mottram St Andrew, Cheshire, by the co-defendant.

He added that there were also four separate complaints against Saha involving allegations away from Mendy’s house, in Manchester and in Sheffield.

He said that the two defendants showed “callous indifference” to the woman who they attempted to have sex with, and that they existed “purely for sex”.

“The acts that the defendants did together show callous indifference to the women they went after.

“In their minds, and this could not be clearer, the stream of women they brought to their homes existed purely to be pursued for sex.

“There are many separate incidents charged on the indictment involving 13 different women, you are going to hear from.

“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 told the jury that at Mendy’s country mansion in Cheshire, the pair were able to “gain control over their victims” due to a number of factors, including that it was “isolated”.

He said: “Put simply, it’s a mansion. It was isolated or so many of the witnesses thought, and once they were there, with the gates locked behind them – they felt vulnerable.

“A number of witnesses had their phones taken off them… There were certainly some complaints of being taken to rooms they believed were locked.

“By the time they gone there, some of the woman were drunk, and there is evidence that some of them defendants at various times wanted these women to be drunk.

“There was difference in ages and wealth between the defendants and the woman you are going to hear from.”

The trial continues.