Video of ex-Manchester City defender, Benjamin Mendy, leaving court after he’s cleared of raping woman after re-trial has emerged online.
Reacting to the not-guilty verdict as he left court, the French footballer had only one word to say; “Alhamdullilah,” an Arabic phrase meaning: ‘Praise be to God’.
It comes after he was cleared of six rapes at an earlier trial in January.
The former Manchester City player was accused of r3ping a 24-year-old woman in a bedroom at his home in Cheshire in October 2020.
He was also charged with the attempted r3pe of a 29-year-old woman at his home two years earlier.
Mendy, who had denied both charges, was found not guilty by the jury of six men and six women at Chester Crown Court. He said the encounters had been consensual.
Earlier this year the footballer had been found not guilty of se3ual offences against a number of women but the jury were unable to reach verdicts on the two charges.
At his retrial, prosecutors said Mendy would host parties and social gatherings at his home The Spinney while under contract at Manchester City.
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 r3pe her.
But the footballer told the jury: “I asked her if we are OK to have s3x. 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.”
Two years later, a woman was out with friends at a bar near Mendy’s home when they were invited back to the footballer’s house.
She alleged he took her phone from her and led her to a locked bedroom. Mendy threw the phone onto a bed and, as she went to retrieve it, Mendy is alleged to have r3ped her.
Mendy told the jury the two had a consensual se3ual encounter and later swapped details on Snapchat.
He was asked whether he had held her down or forced her onto the bed. He said: “No.”
He told the jury: “I will never force to have s3x with a woman.”
Jenny Wiltshire, Head of Serious & General Crime at Hickman & Rose said: ‘Benjamin Mendy would like to thank the members of the jury for focussing on the evidence in this trial, rather than on the rumour and innuendo that have followed this case from the outset.
‘This is the second time that Mr. Mendy has been tried and found not guilty by a jury. He is delighted that both juries reached the correct verdicts.
‘It has been almost 3 years since the police started investigating this matter. Mr Mendy has tried to remain strong but the process has, inevitably had a serious impact on him.
‘He thanks everyone who has supported him throughout this ordeal and now asks for privacy so he can begin rebuilding his life.’
The French international, 28, denied being a ‘sexual predator’ and carrying out the two sex assaults. He was acquitted was following a three-week trial at Chester Crown Court
