Benjamin Mendy’s five-month trial lifted the lid on his private life off the court, offering unique “keyhole” access to his home and inner circle.
The jury heard the defender’s lines of conversation: “I told her, ‘Show me your ass.’ She showed me her butt and I said, ‘Do you want to have sex?’ They discovered that she never used birth control, despite the fact that she regularly slept with several women in the course of a night. They heard that Mendy and her friends sometimes had sex with the same women, albeit separately, some nights.
The case began when the prosecution gave jury a video tour of his mansion, called Spinney, which Mendy bought in November 2017 for £4.8m, shortly after being signed by Manchester City for £52m. It was the first property he saw, he told the court, and he bought it immediately.
The footage, shot on a police officer’s body camera, began outside, where a yellow Lamborghini was among several cars in the driveway. Next, the jury was shown the basement, where Mendy had a swimming pool, a jacuzzi, a sauna and a home gym, as well as a soccer field. On the walls you could see Mendy’s paintings and several graphics that bore his name. On the first floor, a huge room was set up as a nursery for her youngest son.
Mendy liked expensive things but was generous with his belongings, the court heard. His assistant, Jodie Deakin, said she once saw him take off a designer tracksuit and give it to a homeless person in Manchester. Brands sent her lots of unsolicited clothing, which visitors often ended up wearing if theirs got wet at one of his pool parties.
City manager Pep Guardiola said of Mendy: “He’s a really good guy, I would say, very generous. I think he is happy and I remember when we were together and everyone was asking him for some favors and he was able to do it”. But he stressed that he did not know what Mendy was doing in his own time: “I am not his father.”
But the players, often chosen for their greatness before they even reached their teens, were often treated like children, not expected to be able to run their own lives. The image that emerged at Mendy’s court was that of a pampered little prince who was never expected to live as an adult. Deakin described how he had to deal with demands for payments that came to Mendy’s mansion when he ran out of money to pay for renovations. Despite earning large sums of money, he couldn’t keep track of his spending; Only in prison, when he was earning £4 a day, did he learn the value of money, he admitted.
Deakin described a flamboyant character who liked to stand out. “You can tell that he is a footballer, since everyone has a similar dress sense. He drips in designer. A lot of girls would be drawn to that look,” he told the jury.
Despite being popular with the City staff, Mendy “wasn’t the perfect professional”, according to Marc Boixasa, former head of first-team operations and support. “On the one hand, everyone in the team’s locker room, players and coaching staff loved him very much. Sometimes his professionalism was questionable, he would be late in the morning or late for certain meetings.”
It wasn’t surprising that Mendy was frequently late for practice: the jury heard that she would often party until dawn despite having to get up for morning practice. Her guests would stay in charge of the party or ask her private chef to prepare a breakfast for them. Often they were still on the Spinney when he returned.
His cleaner, Yvonne Shea, was well aware that he was throwing wild parties and would sometimes show up to fix the aftermath.
She described attending the player’s home in Prestbury after a party. When she was asked what she saw when she entered the house, Shea said: “Catastrophe. Bottles everywhere, food everywhere. The glass table had been broken. It was like windshield glass, so it was everywhere.”
Several women were wandering around trying to find their bags, he said. Mendy operated what appeared to be an open door policy at the Spinney.
They were part of “the Manchester scene”, congregating in nightclubs such as Chinawhite in Manchester city center or Parea in Alderley Edge, a Cheshire suburb beloved by Manchester’s nouveau riche and, in particular, by players from the two soccer clubs of the city. The jury heard that these were the sort of places where if you want a table, a liter of vodka can cost many hundreds of pounds, champagne a thousand or more.
Covid put a stop to the Manchester scene, at least in public. But the parties continued at Mendy’s mansion, even after police fined him for violating lockdown rules for private gatherings.
It was only when he was sitting in a prison cell after his arrest for alleged sex crimes that Mendy had time to think about his life, he told jurors. Then he realized that the way he and his friends talked about women back then was “disrespectful and mean.”
Mendy told the jury that he knew women were more interested in him because he was a famous soccer player. He had tasted attention during his early years at Monaco, but when he joined Manchester City in 2017, he said, the attention became “10 times more”.
He said: “The way they came to me, it’s not because of my appearance, it’s because of football.”
Asked about his attitude towards having sex with women he didn’t know very well, he said: “At the time I wasn’t thinking about how they felt or could be upset because, for me, if they wanted to have sex and I did, everything was fine. and I would continue with my party.
On Friday, Mendy was acquitted of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. The jury failed to reach a verdict on the charge of raping one woman and attempting to rape another.
Source: news.google.com