Woman tells trial phone was ‘snatched out of her hands’ at Benjamin Mendy’s party

The woman and a friend had been clubbing at Chinawhite in Manchester when they got talking to another woman, who had been in the VIP lounge, in the toilets.

They were then invited back to Mendy’s home in Mottram St Andrew, Cheshire, for an “after party” attended by Mendy’s Manchester City team-mate Jack Grealish.

While at the party, a 23-year-old woman was allegedly raped by Mendy’s friend Louis Saha Matturie, 41, while Mendy, 28, twice allegedly raped a 17-year-old old, Chester Crown Court has been told.

The woman and her friend tagged along to the party, on August 23 last year, getting in a taxi outside the club with three other women and two men before arriving at a “massive house” that was “deep in Cheshire,” she told police in a statement read to the jury.

On arrival, she said a man took their phones and put them in a cardboard box along with numerous other mobiles.

She said: “The house was really busy and like a building site.

“Everyone seemed very drunk. It was like a party had happened and we turned up late.”

There was a group of people – men and women – in the lounge area and a man was playing “crap” music on his phone – and she told him so.

Her friend then whispered that the ‘DJ’ was actually 27-year-old England star Grealish.

She said Grealish called her over to pick a song.

She said: “He was being really flirty and kept commenting how nice I looked. I didn’t take him on,” she added.

She and her friend went downstairs to the swimming pool area, where she said there were “lots of randoms” and a girl wearing only underwear.

“It was a really weird atmosphere,” she said in her statement.

She added: “I started feeling a bit panicky. I didn’t know where I was and had no phone.”

The friends asked for their phones back but were told not to tell anyone where they had been – with “confidentiality” mentioned.

After catching an Uber at about 5.30am, the two young women discussed “how weird it was”, how “the atmosphere was crap” and how their phones had been “snatched out of their hands” when they arrived.

Earlier, the 23-year-old woman told the court she had sex with two men, including Grealish, and “sexual activity” with Mendy, which was all consensual, after being allegedly raped by Matturie.

The 17-year-old claims she was raped twice at the party by Mendy, in his office and trophy room, and twice more by Matturie afterwards, once in a cinema room and later at a Manchester flat.

Prosecutors say Mendy is a “predator” who “turned the pursuit of women for sex into a game”, while Matturie, his “fixer”, allegedly had the job of finding young women for sex.

Mendy denies seven counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault against six young women.

Matturie, of Eccles, Salford, denies six counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault relating to seven young women.

Both men say if any sex did take place with women or girls it was consensual.

None of the women involved can be identified legally.

The trial continues.