French Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy, 27, was charged with an additional rape, during his appearance before Crown Court in Chester (north-west of England) on Wednesday 22 December.
With this new charge, Benjamin Mendy, world champion in 2018, is now targeted by seven counts of rape on four women and one count of sexual assault on a fifth. This seventh charge of rape concerns a new complainant, for acts which allegedly took place in July of this year. The previous facts with which he was accused took place between October 2020 and August 2021.
In pre-trial detention since the end of August, the footballer appeared for forty minutes. At the same hearing, another man, Louis Saha Matturie, 40 – unrelated to former footballer Louis Saha – and whose ties to Mendy are not clearly established, also appeared. He is charged with six rapes and one sexual assault between March and August 2021.
Trial postponed
The two men were remanded in custody in a Liverpool prison pending trial, postponed sine die after when it was due to take place on January 24. Trained in Le Havre, revealed in Marseille then passed through Monaco, Benjamin Mendy had become the most expensive defender in history in 2017 when the Citizens had not hesitated to pay 52 million pounds (about 60 million euros) for to secure its services.
When he arrived at City, where he had a year and a half left on his contract, he was considered one of the great French and world hopes as left-back. But the player’s career has been hampered for four years by injuries, before being so by this legal procedure.
