Benjamin Mendy, a former footballer of Manchester City, was found not guilty of rape and attempted rape.
The French soccer player was cleared of charges that he slept with two different women at his home in Cheshire.
In October 2020, a 24-year-old woman said that the France player raped her in a bedroom at his multi-million-pound home in Cheshire.
He was also accused of trying to rape a woman who was 29 years old at his home two years before.
Mendy was found not guilty by a jury of six men and six women at Chester Crown Court. He had rejected both charges. He said that the meetings had been agreed upon.
After hearing the decision, the football player was “absolutely in tears” and “came out of the court hugging his friends who were there to support him,” a Sky News reporter said outside court.
“The judges took only a short time to decide. They were sent out this morning at 10:40.”
In a statement read outside of court by his lawyers, Mendy said that he “would like to thank the members of the jury for focusing on the evidence in this trial instead of rumors and innuendo that have followed this case.”
They said that Mendy has been strong in the almost three years since the police started looking into allegations against him, but that the process has “inevitably had a serious effect on him.”
“This is the second time a jury has tried Mr. Mendy and found him not guilty. He is very happy that both judges came to the right decisions.”
Benjamin Mendy of Manchester City shows up at the Chester Crown Court for his trial. He is accused of rape and sexual abuse.
Earlier this year, the footballer was found not guilty of sexual assaults against several women, but the judges could not decide on the other two charges.
At his second hearing, prosecutors said that while he was under contract with Manchester City, Mendy would have parties and get-togethers at his £4.2 million home, The Spinney.
Mendy met a British student in a bar in Barcelona in 2017, the court heard. She got close to one of Mendy’s friends and made plans to see him at the footballer’s house the next year.
She said that Mendy tried to rape her after a night out.
But the football player told the judges, “I asked her if it was okay for us to have sex. Because of my friend, she said “No.”
“I said, ‘It’s fine, my friend says it’s fine, so if you want to, that’s fine with him.'” It’s when she first became upset and sad. I just walked out.”
Benjamin Mendy
Two years later, a woman was at a bar near Mendy’s house with some friends when they were asked to come back to his house.
She said he took her phone and led her to a room that was locked. Mendy threw the phone on a bed, and when the woman went to get it, Mendy raped her, police say.
Mendy told the jury that they had a sexual experience that they both agreed to and that they later talked about it on Snapchat.
He was asked if he had held her down or made her get on the bed against her will. He said: “No.”
“I will never force a woman to have sex with me,” he told the judges.
When City paid £52 million to Monaco for Mendy in 2017, he became the most expensive back in the world.
He won three Premier League titles with City, and in 2018, he was on the France team that won the World Cup.
When his deal ran out at the end of June, the club let him go.
Source: Dehotpress
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