French footballer Benjamin Mendy returned to an English court on Monday in yet another rape case, five months after he was acquitted of multiple sex crimes charges.
Mendy, 28, appeared at Chester Court, near Liverpool, to hear opening arguments in the case. Hearings in this new case are due to begin on Tuesday.
Jurors in the previous case, which ended in January, were unable to reach a verdict on the charges: rape of a 24-year-old woman in October 2020 and an attempted rape of another, 29-year-old, in 2018.
After a trial that lasted nearly six months, the seven men and four women who made up the popular jury acquitted the player of another six counts of rape and one of sexual assault against four women.
The judge scheduled for this Monday the beginning of the investigation of the new accusations.
Mendy, whose contract with the Manchester City ends at the end of this month and, by all indications, will not be renewed, denies these accusations and claims not to be “a danger to women”.
During the reading of the verdict of his acquittal in January, the player covered his face with his hands. One of his lawyers, Jenny Wiltshire, then declared that he was “happy” to have been cleared.
Wiltshire added that Mendy hoped to “clear his name on the other charges so he can start rebuilding his life”.
sexual “predator”
Mendy was charged along with Louis Saha Matturie, 41, an alleged accomplice who was also acquitted by the jury on three counts of raping two teenage girls.
Jurors also failed to reach a verdict on three allegations of rape and three of sexual assault against him by five other women.
Like Mendy, Matturie will be tried again later this year.
The prosecution worked to present Mendy as a sexual “predator” who raped and sexually assaulted the young women Matturie took to parties at his luxurious south Manchester mansion.
The player denied having forced any woman to have sex and both claimed that all sexual activity they practiced was consensual.
Mendy arrived at Manchester City in 2017, coming from Monaco, as the most expensive defender in history so far, for 52 million pounds (R$ 223 million at the time).
For the English team, he played 75 games, the last of them on August 15, 2021, days before receiving the first accusations of sexual assault.
world champion for France in 2018, Mendy was last called up to the national team in November 2019.
Source: Gazetaesportiva
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