Benjamin Mendy said he had slept with 10,000 women, rape trial hears

The Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy told one of his alleged victims he had slept with 10,000 women, his rape trial has heard.

The 28-year-old Frenchman made the boast to a woman after raping her in his bedroom, having confiscated her phone at his Cheshire mansion, Chester crown court heard on Thursday.

The woman – the first of seven to go to police to accuse the footballer of rape or sexual assault – said she believed she had been locked in the room after Mendy told her she could not get out and promised to give her phone back if she stripped naked.

In a police video interview played to the jury at Chester crown court, the woman said she met Mendy at Parea, a bar in Alderley Edge, an affluent Cheshire town, on 11 October 2020, when she was 24.

Along with friends she went back to his home in nearby Mottram St Andrew, where she was confronted by the footballer after he saw her using Snapchat on her phone.

She claims he told her that she could not put pictures of his house on social media, as he had already been fined £200,000 by his club for having people back. He then took her phone and started looking through her pictures, she said, some of which were of an intimate nature.

She described following the footballer upstairs and into a bedroom he unlocked using his fingerprint on a touch screen, as she repeatedly asked for her phone back. She said she made it clear she was not interested in him. “I said: I don’t want to have sex with you. I want to go,” she told police.

He then started asking to see her naked but she refused, she claimed.

Believing she was locked in, the woman described taking off all of her clothes apart from a thong. He then grabbed her from behind, she claimed, before he attacked her. When she