A teenager who accused footballer Benjamin Mendy of raping her asked for his Manchester City teammate Jack Grealish’s phone number hours after she claims the assault took place, a court has heard.
The woman alleged that 28-year-old Mendy raped her twice then, later the same day the Frenchman’s friend and co-accused Louis Saha Matturie, 41, also raped her twice during a post-clubbing “after-party” attended by Grealish and others at Mendy’s Cheshire mansion on 23 August last year.
Both defendants deny sexually assaulting the young woman.
The teenager said she asked Matturie for Mr Grealish’s phone number because she wanted to contact a woman she had seen with Mr Grealish at the party, Chester Crown Court was told.
Messages the-then 17-year-old sent to friends after leaving the party after the alleged rapes were read to the jury, after the trial resumed following a three-week break.
Defending Matturie, Lisa Wilding KC, read one message from the teenager, which said: “Jack Grealish is so sexy in person, he had been winking at you all night and saying how beautiful you were, but you did not sleep with him because you are not easy but you were invited out with them all next week.”
Ms Wilding went on: “These messages reveal how you really were that morning, happy, you had had a great night, that’s the truth of it?”
More on Manchester City
Related Topics:
“No, that’s not true,” the witness replied.
Ms Wilding said the young woman began to worry what her boyfriend would say if he found out she’d had sex with two men that night, that she allegedly got “carried away” and claimed she’d been raped.
Advertisement
Earlier, the trial heard the teenager and other young women went to Mendy’s Cheshire home after a visit to China White nightclub in Manchester.
She claims Mendy raped her twice in the office and trophy room at the house, and alleges Matturie raped her in the cinema room and later at his apartment near Manchester city centre.
‘Excitable’ voicemail recordings
The jury has also heard about “excitable” voicemail recordings made by the teenager and sent to her friends in a Snapchat group the day after the party.
In them, the teenager told friends: “Honest to God. Peak of my life…The Dom has gone to my head. Don’t you just love champagne when it’s one thousand five hundred quid?”
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.
Specialist search teams, police dogs and divers have been dispatched to find two sisters who vanished in Aberdeen three days ago.
Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32, were last seen on CCTV in the city’s Market Street at Victoria Bridge at about 2.12am on Tuesday.
The siblings were captured crossing the bridge and turning right onto a footpath next to the River Dee in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.
Police Scotland has launched a major search and said it is carrying out “extensive inquires” in an effort to find the women.
Chief Inspector Darren Bruce said: “Local officers, led by specialist search advisors, are being assisted by resources including police dogs and our marine unit.”
Aberdeenshire Drone Services told Sky News it has offered to help in the search and is waiting to hear back from Police Scotland.
The sisters, from Aberdeen city centre, are described as slim with long brown hair.
Police said the Torry side of Victoria Bridge where the sisters were last seen contains many commercial and industrial units, with searches taking place in the vicinity.
The force urged businesses in and around the South Esplanade and Menzies Road area to review CCTV footage recorded in the early hours of Tuesday in case it captured anything of significance.
Drivers with relevant dashcam footage are also urged to come forward.
CI Bruce added: “We are continuing to speak to people who know Eliza and Henrietta and we urge anyone who has seen them or who has any information regarding their whereabouts to please contact 101.”
Britain’s gas storage levels are “concerningly low” with less than a week of demand in store, the operator of the country’s largest gas storage site said on Friday.
Plunging temperatures and high demand for gas-fired power stations are the main factors behind the low levels, Centrica said.
The UK is heavily reliant on gas for its home heating and also uses a significant amount for electricity generation.
As of the 9th of January 2025, UK storage sites are 26% lower than last year’s inventory at the same time, leaving them around half full,” Centrica said.
“This means the UK has less than a week of gas demand in store.”
The firm’s Rough gas storage site, a depleted field off England’s east coast, makes up around half of the country’s gas storage capacity.
Glasgow has been a city crying out for solutions to a devastating drugs epidemic that is ravaging people hooked on deadly narcotics.
We have spent time with vulnerable addicts in recent months and witnessed first-hand the dirty, dangerous street corners and back alleys where they would inject their £10 heroin hit, not knowing – or, in many cases, not caring – whether that would be the moment they die.
“Dying would be better than this life,” one man told me.
It was a grim insight into the daily reality of life in the capital of Europe’s drug death crisis.
Scotland has a stubborn addiction to substances spanning generations. Politicians of all persuasions have failed to properly get a grip of the emergency.
But there is a new concept in town.
From Monday, a taxpayer-funded unit is allowing addicts to bring their own heroin and cocaine and inject it while NHS medical teams supervise.
It may be a UK-first but it is a regular feature in some other major European cities that have claimed high success rates in saving lives.
Glasgow has looked on with envy at these other models.
One supermarket car park less than a hundred metres from this new facility is a perfect illustration of the problem. An area littered with dirty needles and paraphernalia. A minefield where one wrong step risks contracting a nasty disease.
It is estimated hundreds of users inject heroin in public places in Glasgow every week. HIV has been rife.
The new building, which will be open from 9am until 9pm 365 days a year, includes bays where clean needles are provided as part of a persuasive tactic to lure addicts indoors in a controlled environment.
There is a welcome area where people will check in before being invited into one of eight bays. The room is clinical, covered in mirrors, with a row of small medical bins.
We were shown the aftercare area where users will relax after their hit in the company of housing and social workers.
The idea is controversial and not cheap – £2.3m has been ring-fenced every year.
Authorities in the city first floated a ‘safer drug consumption room’ in 2016. It failed to get off the ground as the UK Home Office under the Conservatives said they would not allow people to break the law to feed habits.
The usual wrangle between Edinburgh and London continued for years with Downing Street suggesting Scotland could, if it wanted, use its discretion to allow these injecting rooms to go ahead.
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
The stalemate ended when Scotland’s most senior prosecutor issued a landmark decision that it would not be in the public interest to arrest those using such a facility.
One expert has told me this new concept is unlikely to lead to an overall reduction in deaths across Scotland. Another described it as an expensive vanity project. Supporters clearly disagree.
The question is what does success look like?
The big test will be if there is a spike in crime around the building and how it will work alongside law enforcement given drug dealers know exactly where to find their clients now.
It is not disputed this is a radical approach – and other cities across Britain will be watching closely.