French footballer Benjamin Mendy charged with seventh rape, trial postponed

Published on : 12/22/2021 – 2:11 PM

French Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy, 27, has been charged with an additional rape, it was learned during his appearance on Wednesday, December 22, in an English court.

World champion in 2018, Benjamin Mendy 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. British justice did not give more details. The previous facts with which he was accused extended between October 2020 and August 2021.

In pre-trial detention since the end of August, the footballer appeared on Wednesday for 40 minutes in court at Crown Court in Chester.

Trial postponed to summer 2022

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 also charged with six rapes and one sexual assault between March and August 2021.

Judge Patrick Thompsons has placed the two in pre-trial detention in a Liverpool prison pending trial, postponed to the summer (June 27 or August 1) after being initially scheduled for January 24.

A preliminary hearing is however maintained on this date, and another has been scheduled for January 7.

Mendy is expected to announce shortly whether or not he pleaded guilty to the new rape charges. The maximum penalty he incurs, if he pleads not guilty, is life imprisonment. And even if he avoids such a sentence, a conviction could earn him several years behind bars and an immediate end of his career.

Trained in Le Havre, revealed in Marseille and spent a season with Monaco, Mendy had become the most expensive defender in history in 2017 when the Citizens did not hesitate to pay 52 million pounds (about 60 million euros) 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 career of the player, now 27, has been hampered for four years by injuries, before being now by this legal process.

With AFP