Benjamin Mendy, a former player for Manchester City and France, sobbed on Friday as a UK jury found him not guilty of any sex offenses, putting an end to a three-year legal journey.
Upon receiving the decision at the conclusion of the three-week trial at Chester Crown Court in northwest England, Mendy, 28, knelt down and wiped away his tears.
It took the jury of six men and six women about three hours and fifteen minutes to find the defendants innocent of both the rape and attempted rape charges.
After a six-month trial, the great player, who would have risked a significant prison sentence if found guilty, was cleared in January of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.
However, two other counts in that trial were left unresolved by the jury, leading to a retrial.
Mendy, whose Manchester City contract expired at the end of June, had refuted every accusation.
He was charged with three charges of rape involving two teens alongside Louis Saha Matturie, a 41-year-old alleged “fixer” who was declared not guilty by the jury in the first trial.
Three charges of rape and three counts of sexual assault against Matturie by five other women were also left unresolved by the jury.
Later this year, he will stand trial again separately.
At parties held at Matturie’s opulent mansion south of Manchester, the prosecution said that Mendy was a sexual “predator” who raped or abused young ladies who had been lured there by Matturie.
Mendy, however, denied ever coercing any woman into having sex, and they both insisted that any relationships they had with women were consensual.
Mendy played 75 games for Manchester City after making a record-breaking deal for a defender in 2017 when he transferred from French club Monaco.
But injuries and a decline in form limited the amount of time he could play. The defender won the World Cup with his country’s team in 2018, and he received his last of 10 caps for France in November of that same year.
He missed Manchester City’s treble of the English Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League last season due to the tryouts.
