Footballer Benjamin Mendy 'turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game', court hears

Young women were targeted and taken back to places they could be raped and sexually assaulted by a footballer and his friend, a court has heard.

Opening the trial of Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy, the prosecution said it was "another chapter in a very old story: men who rape and sexually assault women, because they think they are powerful, and because they think they can get away with it.”

Mr Cray added the feeling of the alleged victims, “counted for nothing”.

"These women were disposable: things to be used for sex then thrown to one side," he told Chester Crown Court.

"That was the effect of deliberate, planned choices the defendants made, and the desires they let loose many times.”

Mendy, 28, is accused of eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault.

His co-accused, Louis Saha Matturie, 40, of Eccles, Salford, denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault relating to eight young women.

The two men claim all the women consented to sex, willingly with only a couple of allegations where there is a denial that anything sexual happened.

Timothy Cray said there are no “big disputes” about times or places and the “what happened” is not controversial.

But, the prosecutor told the jury: “We say these defendants weren’t in some happy state of sexual ignorance about how this all works, they knew very well what they were doing.

“They turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game and if women got hurt or distressed, too bad.”

Mr Cray said the prosecution case was that the defendants “were prepared to cross that line” of consent “over and over again”.

The court heard Mendy, a £52 million Premier League star, was a “reasonably famous football player” who “because of his wealth and status, others were prepared to help him to get what he wanted”.

The prosecutor said Saha was Mendy’s friend and fixer and one of his jobs was “to find young women and to create the situations where those young women could be raped and sexually assaulted”.

He said: "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."

The jury was also told "the defendants’ pursuit of these 13 women turned them into predators, who were prepared to commit serious sexual offences.

"The fact they would not take ‘no’ for an answer, or that they engineered situations where ‘no’ was not even an option."

The jury of eight men and six women were told Mendy's home, in Chester, was central to the case.

The Spinney, in Mottram St Andrew in rural Cheshire, was described as an isolated mansion, where it is alleged a number of the rapes happened.

Mr Cray said Mendy’s home was “part and parcel” of how the defendants were able to abuse their alleged victims.

Once at the house the victims were vulnerable for a number of reasons, the jury heard, including having their mobile phones taken away once they arrived, some victims believing they were in locked rooms, and the differences in ages and wealth between the defendants and the complainants.

Mr Cray said there were five dates, between October 2018 and August 2021, when nine young women arrived at Mendy’s address and afterwards made complaints of rape and, or sexual assault against Mendy and Saha.

There are also four separate complaints against Saha involving allegations away from Mendy’s house, in Manchester and Sheffield.

“Vulnerable, scared, isolated – these are words you’ll hear from lots of the witnesses,” Mr Cray added.

"Ask yourselves, as you get under the skin of what was happening, who had the power and control in the situations these women experienced and you will hear about?"

The prosecutor said the central question involved in the trial is whether the women consented to sex.

Mr Cray added: "Ultimately, these cases are about where the line is drawn.

"You will be able to weigh up whether, in each case, the defendants crossed those lines because this is central, readily understandable life experience - you will know where the truth is after having heard the women concerned, the challenges to them and the other evidence that is relevant to the allegations in the charges."

The alleged offences happened between July 2012 to August 2021 - and both men deny the charges.

The trial continues.