I am a soccer enthusiast (it’s soccer not football). My favorite soccer team is Chelsea, a team in the English Premier League based in London. The team that secured the title this year is Manchester City and one of their players is Benjamin Mendy. I should say former player as Manchester City released him in June of this year due to his expiring contract. Players getting released isn’t all too common in the sport of soccer. Usually it comes down to poor performances on and off the field. But even then, clubs would rather sell the player for money instead of releasing them. But Benjamin Mendy is in a unique predicament. Mendy was arrested in August 2021 following the accusations of 3 alleged victims for 4 counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. As a result, Man City suspended the player indefinitely until he was eventually let go. He was placed in a high security prison in Manchester, England but was eventually let go on parole. After about a year after getting arrested, Mr. Mendy underwent a 15 week long trial in which he was found not guilty of all but one rape and attempted rape charge. After several months, Benjamin Mendy participated in another trial on the two counts that weren’t resolved in the first case. Mendy was eventually found not guilty of both charges.

Now there are two possibilities that each bode interesting revelations about the justice system, specifically relating to sexual assault and rape cases. The first scenario is that Benjamin Mendy is in fact innocent and hasn’t engaged in any criminal behavior. This highlights the flaws within our justice system, the imperfections that can ruin a person’s life. If Benjamin Mendy wasn’t arrested in the first place, he could’ve had a successful career on a title winning team. Instead, it will be really difficult for him to even be offered a contract by a top team for obvious PR reasons along with the fact that he hasn’t trained for around 2 years. How to change such a fragile and deficient system, I don’t know, but something needs to change especially when it comes to sexual assault cases. Another possibility is that the victims were in fact raped and sexually assaulted by Benjamin Mendy. As illustrated earlier, the justice system is by no means perfect and a not guilty verdict doesn’t necessarily mean Mendy is innocent. Look at the amount of coverage this case is receiving. Soccer is a huge market that touches every corner of the world. The amount of support and disapproval towards both parties is frankly staggering. Such press can have an affect on the mass public’s perception of false accusations when it comes to rape. I certainly thought the rate of false accusations was much higher than the 2 to 10 percent reported by Brown University. All of the drama and the media attention deters real victims of rape and sexual assault from contacting the authorities. Moreover, the public are less likely to be in support of sexual assault victims after the bombardment of false myth and information regarding such cases. We, as a population, need to start researching issues from trusted sources rather than relying on flashy headlines, amend the justice system to prevent lives and career from being lost, and support those who are victims of sexual assault and rape. But hey, it’s just a thought.