Benjamin Mendy: Woman woke up with footballer raping her, court told

A young woman tearfully told detectives how she woke up in bed with Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy raping her, a court has heard.

The 28-year-old denies charges of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault.

Chester Crown Court was played a police interview in which the woman, who was 19 at the time, said she went to the footballer's house in Cheshire after a night out in Manchester in July 2021.

She said she fell asleep alone but "woke up to find Ben on top of me".

The woman said in the interview played to the jury she had been drinking champagne with Mr Mendy, his friends and other young women at China White night club.

She then returned to the footballer's mansion in Mottram St Andrew, near Prestbury.

After spending time in the swimming pool, she said she became sleepy and went up to a top floor bedroom.

She changed out of the bikini she had brought with her and into her underwear and fell asleep, alone, in the double bed, the court heard.

Breaking down in tears, she said: "I woke up to find Ben on top of me, but I was on my side. It was horrific, I was on my period.

"I remember five seconds of it and him putting a towel under me.

"I remember saying, 'No. I'm on my period'."

The woman, who described herself as "out of it" or "6/10" drunk, is asked if there was "any chance" Mr Mendy could have thought she wanted to have sex with him that night.

She replied: "No, because I don't know him that well."

The woman told how two or three months before the alleged rape she had sex with Mendy "like a one-night thing", but that she was sober and it was consensual.

Under cross-examination, Eleanor Laws QC, defending, suggested her account of what happened, waking up to find Mr Mendy raping her, was the "exact same" allegation made by her friend, who the footballer is also accused of raping the same evening.

The witness replied: "I have not spoken to her."

Mr Mendy denies the rape, in the early hours of 24 July 2021, along with the rape of two other young women over the same 24-hour period.

He also denies five other counts of rape, one attempted rape and a sexual assault, all relating to seven young women, between October 2018 and August last year.

His 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 described Mr Mendy as a "predator" who they claim turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game.

It is alleged Mr Matturie, Mr Mendy's friend and fixer, had the job of finding young women for sex.

Both men deny any offences and maintain if any sex did take place with women or girls it was consensual.

The trial continues.

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