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A woman who claimed she was raped by Manchester city footballer, Benjamin Mendy’s friend and fixer, denied making up the claim because she was ’embarrassed’ about having had sex with an older man, a court heard Thursday, September 15.
She told the Mendy rape trial that she was attacked by Louis Saha Matturie, 41, after going to his flat with a friend to celebrate her 19th birthday celebrations in March 2021.
Ms Lisa Wilding, lawyer for Matturie, suggested that the complainant had told friends that her alleged rapist, known as Saha, was ‘about 40 years old with wrinkles.’
The lady agreed she might have said that but had no ‘precise’ memory.
Barrister Wilding said: ‘You said that he was ugly and was not someone you would have sex with or be physically attracted to. You were trying to justify why you had sex because you did not find him attractive.
‘I suggest you said all these things because you wanted your friends to think that you would not have consented to have sex with him.’
The witness replied: ‘No. I would not care what they thought.’
Ms Wilding said that she had been flirting with Matturie at the flat in Salford before the couple moved to the bedroom where they ‘enjoyed’ consensual sex.Ms Wilding said: ‘The following morning you were embarrassed at having had sex with a man you had only met that
The witness replied: ‘No, I was shocked at what had happened to me.’
Ms Wilding said: ‘The moment you left the bedroom, you were determined in your own mind that you had been raped.’
The complainant replied: ‘I had not really accepted it but I knew something wrong had happened. I came to accept it later but I knew that something was wrong when I was leaving.
She said: ‘It was still my 19th birthday and before everything else, there were good memories. I do not see why not.’
The witness also claimed that she had warned the friend who had gone with her to the flat not to go back there because ‘I knew what type of man he was.’
The friend, who also claims she was raped by Matturie at the flat three weeks later, told the court in a video interview that the witness had not been interested in him because ‘she thought he was ugly.’
The complainant told the court she accepted that she had been on medication for ADHD since she was 15 and that it sometimes reacted with alcohol to make her feel ‘hyper and more emotional.’
Two friends said the witness ‘looked awful’ when she returned to the flat where her birthday party had been held.
One male friend said in a statement read to the jury: ‘She looked awful and looked very withdrawn. She said she had been raped and she appeared quite distant and anxious when she was telling us what happened.
‘She said she did not want to go down the route of telling the police, she wanted to forget about it.”
Mendy, 28, denies seven rapes, one attempted rape and one sexual assault while his friend Matturie, denies six rapes and three sexual assaults.
The trial continues.
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