Ex-Man City footballer Benjamin Mendy found not guilty of rape

<p>Ex-Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy has been cleared of raping a woman and attempting to rape another, BBC reports.</p>, <p>It will be recalled that the 28-year-old was accused of attacking a 24-year-old woman at his £4m mansion in Mottram St Andrew, Cheshire in October 2020.</p>, <p>He was also accused of the attempted rape of another woman, aged 29, who said he had also molested her at his home two years before.</p>, <p>It comes after he was cleared of six rapes at an earlier trial in January.</p>, <p>After a three-week trial at Chester Crown Court, the France international sobbed as the jury’s not-guilty findings were announced.</p>, <p>Before coming to a decision, the jury of six men and six women pondered for almost three hours and fifteen minutes.</p>, <p>But jurors failed to reach verdicts on two counts of rape and attempted rape, prompting a re-trial.</p>, <p>The footballer, whose contract with Manchester City expired this month, was cleared at the earlier trial of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, relating to four young women or teenagers.</p>, <p>The first complainant, woman A, a 29-year-old student, first met Mendy while in a nightclub in Barcelona in late 2017 and she became intimate with one of his friends, the trial was told.</p>, <p>They kept in touch and a year later she arranged to visit Mendy’s friend at the footballer’s house, where they stayed after they all went with other girls for a night out.</p>, <p>The woman told the jury that the morning after, when she took a shower in the en-suite bathroom, Mr Mendy appeared uninvited, wearing just boxer shorts, and he was visibly “aroused”.</p>, <p>She alleged Mendy then grabbed her and tried to rape her on the bed, despite her repeatedly telling him to stop.</p>, <p>Mendy told the jury the two were “flirting” during the night out and the next morning he went to her room and they began hugging on a bed.</p>, <p>He said she told him she would not have sex with him because she was with his friend.</p>, <p>Mendy said she th