Benjamin Mendy, who used to play football for Manchester City and France, broke down in tears on Friday when a UK jury found him not guilty of sex crimes.
This ended a three-year court battle.
When Mendy, age 28, heard the decision at the end of his three-week trial at Chester Crown Court in northwest England, he put his head on his knees and wiped away tears.
Six men and six women on the jury took about three hours and 15 minutes to decide that one count of rape and another count of attempted rape were not true.
The famous football player could have gone to jail for a long time if he had been found guilty. In January, after a six-month hearing, he was cleared of six counts of rape and one of sexual abuse.
But the jury in that trial couldn’t decide on two other counts, so the case had to be tried again.
Mendy’s deal with Manchester City ended at the end of June, and he had rejected all the claims against him.
He was charged with three counts of rape against two teenagers along with Louis Saha Matturie, 41, who was said to be a “fixer” but was found not guilty by a jury at an earlier hearing.
The jury also couldn’t decide on three counts of rape and three counts of sexual attack by five other women against Matturie.
He will be tried again in a different case later this year.
The prosecution said that Mendy was a sexual “predator” who raped or sexually attacked young women that Matturie brought to parties at his expensive home south of Manchester.
Mendy, on the other hand, said he had never forced a woman to have sex, and both he and his wife said that any sex they had with women was voluntary.
Mendy set a record for a defender when he went from French club Monaco to Manchester City in 2017. He played 75 games for City.
But he couldn’t play as much because he got hurt and lost his form.
After helping France win the World Cup in 2018, the defender got his last of 10 caps for France in November 2019.
Because of the trials, he didn’t get to see Manchester City win the English Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League all in the same season.
In a statement released after the decision, the footballer’s lawyers said that he was “delighted” to have been cleared in both cases.
“Benjamin Mendy would like to thank the jury members for focusing on the evidence in this trial instead of the rumors and innuendo that have been going around about this case from the beginning,” they said.
“This is the second time a jury has tried Mr. Mendy and found him not guilty. He is very happy that both judges came to the right decisions.
“The cops have been looking into this case for almost three years now. Mr. Mendy has tried to keep his cool, but the whole thing has had a big effect on him.
“He thanks everyone who has helped him through this hard time and now wants to be left alone so he can start to put his life back together.”