Former Manchester City and French footballer Benjamin Mendy has been found not guilty of rape and attempted rape by a jury at Chester Crown Court.
The former Manchester City footballer, released by the club, had been accused of attacking two women at his mansion during the pandemic.
Mendy was found not guilty by a jury of six men and six women at Chester Crown Court. He said the encounters had been consensual.
The court heard Mendy had met a British student in a nightclub in Barcelona in 2017. She became close with a friend of Mendy’s and arranged to visit him at the footballer’s home the following year.
After a night out, she alleged Mendy tried to rape her.
But the footballer told the jury:
I asked her if we are OK to have sex. She told me, ‘No’ because of my friend. “I was like, ‘It’s fine, my friend says it’s OK, so if you want, he’s OK with that. It’s when she started to be like that – upset, sad. I just left the room. I will never force to have sex with a woman.”
Benjamin Mendy became the Premier League’s most expensive defender when City paid £52m to Monaco for him in 2017.
He won three titles with City and was part of France’s World Cup-winning squad in 2018.
This is the second time Benjamin Mendy has been tried and found not guilty by the jury. He is delighted that both jurors reached the correct verdict.
Source: Sky Sports
