Manchester City's Benjamin Mendy 'threatened to kidnap woman before trying to rape her', court hears

A woman who has accused footballer Benjamin Mendy of attempted rape has described how he threatened to kidnap her before the alleged attack.

She said she wanted to scream while he assaulted her in his Cheshire mansion in October 2018, but believed “there was no point as he’s in his own territory”.

Manchester City player Benjamin Mendy, 28, denies eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault.

At Chester Crown Court, jurors watched a recorded interview with the woman, now 32 and who cannot be identified. She is the first of seven women to give evidence in the French international's trial.

She claims after a night out in Manchester, Mendy tried to rape her.

“I kept pushing him away, he kept grabbing me back", she said.

The woman said she met Mendy in Barcelona club in October 2017, but she had been much more interested in his friend, who invited her to the North West in October 2018.

She said she travelled up to Manchester to see his friend at the Mendy's house in Cheshire on 24 October 2018.

They all went for a meal in Manchester before going to two nightclubs.

She said at the second club the footballer approached her and said "When he’s not looking, I’m going to kidnap you."

"I thought he was joking", she said.

In the interview, she described how, the morning after the night out, Mendy walked into the bathroom as she was in the shower at his house. She had stayed the night with his friend.

She said: “So he walked in and, out of shock, I said, ‘You need to leave’. I saw him hold himself in his private area.”

The woman said she managed to wrap a towel around herself and grab some underwear but Mendy snatched it off her, she said.

“I kept pushing him away, he kept grabbing me back", she said.

Chester Crown Court heard the woman, then aged 29, describe "trying to push him off" while he "kept pulling me down" in the alleged attack in 2018.

She said: “I just kept trying to wriggle out. He got very close but I pushed him away as much as I could.”

The woman told the officer she kept thinking: “Shall I scream? There’s no point as he’s in his own territory.”

Mendy denies eight counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault.

He is alleged to have committed the offences against seven young women between October 2018 and August last year.

Prosecutors have told the jury that Mendy is a “predator” who “turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game”.

Eleanor Laws QC, defending Mendy, asked the witness about a text message she sent to a friend that morning before the alleged attempted rape.

In it the woman had said: “He runs around after me saying, ‘Don’t go’. He wants to f*** me.”

Asked why she had sent it, the woman replied: “Because… he had this predatory look on his face.”

Timothy Cray, prosecuting, asked how she felt during the alleged attack.

She replied: “Out of control. I was not in a place familiar to me, I was in a different territory, it was his, he was surrounded by all his friends and I had no one else there.

“I kept saying, ‘Stop’ and ‘No’ but that wasn’t heard.”

Mendy’s co-accused, Louis Saha Matturie, 41, of Eccles, Salford, denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault relating to eight young women.

Prosecutors have told jurors that Saha Matturie was Mendy’s friend and fixer, and that one of his jobs was “to find young women and to create the situations where those young women could be raped and sexually assaulted”.

The jury heard that central to the case is Mendy’s home, The Spinney, described as an isolated mansion, in Mottram St Andrew in rural Cheshire.

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

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

The jury has heard that Mendy and Saha Matturie say in “broad terms” that all the women consented to sex, willingly with only a couple of allegations where there is a denial that anything sexual happened.

The alleged offences span July 2012 to August 2021.

The trial continues.