The settlement brings the total amount the city has won from opioid companies to more than $322 million, Mayor Brandon M. Scott said. Baltimore’s lawsuit against the remaining companies is set to go to trial next week.

“This settlement marks another major victory for the City of Baltimore and further validates our decision to carry on in the fight to hold these companies accountable,” Scott said in a statement.

The city opted out of previous global settlements with Teva and other major opioid companies to pursue its own lawsuit in hopes of winning larger payouts. The settlement announced Monday is more than seven times what Baltimore would have received as part of a national settlement with Teva, the city said in a news release. Teva also will pay out the full $80 million by July 2025.

“In total, the city has now secured more than three times the total amount it would have received from all available global settlements with opioid defendants,” the city said.

The Teva deal is the fourth settlement announced in connection with the city’s opioid lawsuit, which alleges opioid manufacturers and distributors irresponsibly marketed addictive painkillers and failed to block unusually large orders of drugs to Baltimore pharmacies. More than half a billion legal opioids flooded the Baltimore area between 2006 and 2019; the city claims the glut contributed to its ongoing overdose crisis.

Teva Pharmaceuticals did not respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.

Baltimore previously announced $45 million settlements with Allergan and CVS and a $152.5 million settlement with Cardinal Health, a major opioid distributor.

The city did not say how much of the Teva settlement will go to its outside counsel in the opioid lawsuit, the New York law firm Susman Godfrey. Nearly half of the Allergan settlement went to Susman Godfrey, an amount that included both attorney fees and a $5 million reimbursement for expenses the firm incurred during the litigation. Law firms that take cases on contingency typically keep about a third of any proceeds.

Under the Teva settlement, the city said it will allocate $5 million for education and outreach about the 988 suicide and crisis hotline, $3 million to Penn North Recovery Center and $2 million to the BMore POWER program of Baltimore Behavioral Health System, which is a outreach team of peers working to prevent overdoses.

“This new funding will allow Bmore POWER to expand its reach and connect with more people who use drugs and offer tools and information to ensure their safety and save lives in our communities,” Baltimore Behavioral Health System said in a statement Monday.

The remaining money will be distributed under a plan Scott outlined last month for how the city will manage the opioid settlement money. In an executive order, Scott established an opioid restitution fund and detailed guidelines for how the money can be used. The city also plans to create a Restitution Advisory Board to review grant applications and make recommendations for how to spend the money.

The executive order also created two new positions, an executive director of overdose response and an opioid restitution program manager who will support the advisory board.

Earlier this week, the attorneys general of Maryland and D.C. moved against other participants in the transactions: the three Montgomery County businesses that sold the firearms in the first place.

The lawsuit against Engage Armament, United Gun Shop and Atlantic Guns is part of a legal strategy aimed at holding gun stores accountable when they sell firearms to straw purchasers. With the suit, Maryland and D.C. joined other communities across the country that have sued over these gun sales.

“We expect gun store owners to be on the front line. They are at the point of sale of every lawful gun transaction,” said Jennifer Donelan, a spokesperson for Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown.

“When they don’t fulfill their duties and responsibilities, bad things happen. Our strategy will continue to be addressing the most egregious of these violations — putting our resources toward enforcement actions that will have the most impact on protecting Marylanders’ safety.”

The lawsuit centers on a public nuisance claim, or the idea that the gun stores contributed to a problem that interferes with the public’s right to use and enjoy public spaces, travel or go to school without fear of gun violence.

“The unfortunate reality is that the individuals using and possessing guns are not the only ones responsible for this problem: gun dealers who flout their legal responsibilities and fail to adhere to responsible business practices are also to blame for putting firearms in the wrong hands, providing easy access to guns and fueling gun violence in the region,” the attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit. “The effects of this irresponsible and unlawful conduct are felt across the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, as guns move throughout the area once they enter the criminal market.”

The lawsuit claims the three gun stores ignored warning signs that the buyer, Demetrius Minor, was engaging in straw purchases. A straw purchase occurs when a federal firearms licensee, like a gun store, sells a gun to a buyer who is actually purchasing the gun for a third party, often a person who is legally prohibited from owning a gun.

The three gun stores named in the lawsuit collectively sold 34 semiautomatic pistols to Minor over a seven-month period, the attorneys general said. He transferred most of the guns to a relative with a history of violent felonies, according to the lawsuit.

Minor “turned around and trafficked the guns,” D.C. Attorney Brian L. Schwalb said at a news conference this week. “Not surprisingly, many of those guns became crime guns, recovered at crime scenes in the district and in Maryland.”

Minor pleaded guilty to dealing firearms without a license and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, court records show.

Nine guns sold to Minor turned up at crime scenes, according to the lawsuit, including one found in the D.C. hotel room of a Prince George’s County man who also possessed an illegal high-capacity magazine. Hyattsville Police recovered another at the residence of a stabbing suspect.

Mark Pennak, the president of the gun rights group Maryland Shall Issue, said he is still examining the allegations in the lawsuit but questioned how the sales to Minor were permitted when Maryland’s gun laws limit how often buyers can purchase handguns and require the buyers to be approved by the state police.

In an emailed statement, Atlantic Guns said it “has never and will never knowingly sell to someone who we have reason to believe is committing a straw purchase. Until we have received and reviewed the complaint, we are unable to comment further.”

Engage Armament and United Gun Shop did not respond to requests for comment.

This type of litigation aimed at gun shops started being used in the late 1990s and early 2000s, said Daniel Webster, a distinguished research scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

“The purpose of these types of laws and the use of it in this manner is to promote business practices that are responsible and take into consideration factors beyond the business’s bottom line,” he said.

Cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York have used lawsuits like these to go after gun shops, including stores in other states with more permissive gun laws. The lawsuits also are a way to supplement the regulatory work done by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which lacks the staffing and budget to conduct frequent inspections of gun dealers.

Webster, who researches gun policy, said he has found a significant reduction in guns that are recovered from crime scenes soon after being bought legally — a sign of straw purchasing — after these crackdowns in other states. Research also has shown that only a minority of licensed gun dealers account for a large share of the guns recovered in crimes.

Webster said it’s difficult to say what effect the Maryland lawsuit will have, especially since Maryland already has fairly strict gun regulations.

“I would suspect that this will have a chilling effect and dealers are going to take notice,” he said. “They know that Maryland has an attorney general who is willing to take these actions, that the laws are on the books for them to use them.”

Davonne T. Dorsey, 31, agreed to the sentence as part of a plea agreement reached with prosecutors earlier this year. He was accused of participating in the kidnappings of a carjacking victim and an employee of a check-cashing business.

“These are terrible crimes,” U.S. District Judge Brendan A. Hurson said in court. “I heard from the victims firsthand about what they went through, and it was tough to hear.”

Hurson sentenced Dorsey to 10 years in prison for the carjacking charge and 5 years in prison for the gun charge, to be served consecutively.

The group carjacked a man in May 2021 after using police-style lights to get him to pull over his vehicle on a road in Harford County’s Edgewood, according to Dorsey’s plea agreement. The attackers also were wearing vests with “police” written on them, masks and gloves, prosecutors said. The men put the victim in handcuffs, duct taped his eyes and mouth, and drove him around for more than five hours.

The carjackers demanded $10,000, told the man they would kill his parents if he did not cooperate, and then burned his chest with a blowtorch multiple times before releasing him in Baltimore City, prosecutors wrote.

Another kidnapping victim, a woman, worked at a check-cashing business in Cockeysville when two of the men approached her wearing police-style vests and carrying guns on Aug. 2, 2021, according to the plea agreement. The men forced the woman into their vehicle, where they and a third man bound her wrists with zip ties and blindfolded her.

The group drove the woman around for six hours, demanding safe codes for the business and money, before releasing her around 1 a.m. in Baltimore City.

Dorsey pleaded guilty to involvement in two kidnappings. The other defendants also were accused in a third, also involving an employee at a check-cashing business, in May 2021. That woman was burned with a blow torch when she could not provide the safe combinations for the business, prosecutors wrote.

Dorsey, who lived in Baltimore County’s Gwynn Oak, did not speak at his sentencing hearing. He has no prior criminal convictions and support from family, including his young daughter, Hurson said.

“I don’t know what happened here that you ended up in this situation,” the judge said. “I have a strong feeling it’s in the past. I just hope that you can get through this and get out and be the father that I know you want to be.”

A second man who pleaded guilty in the case, Franklin J. Smith, is set to be sentenced Friday. The two other defendants, Dennis A. Hairston and Donte D. Stanley, were convicted of kidnapping, carjacking and other serious charges at a trial in June. Both men will be sentenced in November.

Troy Spencer, 50, previously pleaded guilty to gun charges in connection with the confrontation at Leith Walk Elementary Middle School in North Baltimore’s Ramblewood neighborhood, where he pulled a gun on one of his son’s coaches during a basketball game March 6, 2023, causing a panic in the school’s gymnasium.

U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin said a lengthy prison term was necessary to protect the public from Spencer and deter others from bringing guns into sensitive public spaces.

“The fact that you would go to your boy’s elementary school with a loaded semi-automatic weapon is just terrifying,” Rubin said.

Spencer’s son was in fifth grade at the time of the incident.

Spencer pleaded guilty in June to possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of a firearm in a school zone. He is prohibited from possessing a firearm due to a 1997 second-degree murder conviction for which he served about eight years in prison, prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum.

The defense and prosecution agreed on a recommended sentence range of about four to eight years, which was higher than federal sentencing guidelines, as part of the plea agreement. On Wednesday, prosecutors sought the highest sentence of 96 months, while Jennifer Smith, Spencer’s defense attorney, asked for 57 months.

“Troy Spencer pulled a gun in the middle of an elementary school gymnasium in front of dozens of children and their families,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gordin said.

In a time of mass shootings and active shooter drills at schools, he said, children are especially traumatized by the sight of a gun at school.

Spencer confronted the coaches because he was “unhappy about his son’s playing time,” prosecutors wrote in their memo. As the verbal argument escalated, Spencer pulled a Taurus G2C 9mm semiautomatic handgun from his waistband and pointed it at the coach.

The sight of the weapon caused a panic as young basketball players and their families fled the gym, Gordin said. The volunteer coaches managed to wrestle the gun away from Spencer, who fled in a vehicle and was arrested a week later.

The gun, which one of the coaches turned over to the police, was loaded with seven rounds of 9mm ammunition, prosecutors wrote in court papers.

Rubin called the incident “hair-raising” and said deterring others was a key reason for her sentence.

“The community really knows about what happened here and it’s important to me that people think twice about thoughtlessly bringing a loaded weapon into a school,” she said.

Smith, Spencer’s defense lawyer, said that Spencer was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder when he went to the basketball game. He had been shot 11 times just a few months earlier, she said, and the game was one of his first times leaving his home since the attack.

“He was not a reasonable person that day,” Smith said.

No one was ever apprehended in connection with Spencer’s shooting, she added.

Spencer also has a long history of mental health problems and traumatic experiences. Rubin said that Spencer, according to a presentencing report, has witnessed eight murders during his life, and has been shot and stabbed multiple times. He also has a criminal history that includes gun and drug offenses.

Rubin recommended that he receive mental health treatment as part of his sentence, which includes a period of supervision after his prison term.

“I hope that you get the help that you need,” Rubin told Spencer.

The 984-foot container ship, which has a gashed bow and is currently receiving repairs in Norfolk, Virginia, will sail directly to China “on or about September 17, 2024″ according to a letter filed in federal court by the Department of Justice’s civil division Wednesday. The letter states that the ship’s owner and manager have informed “claimants” of their intent to sail and that from Thursday through Sept. 14, the claimants will be able to “perform inspections and testing.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean the ship will actually set sail by mid-September. Both times the Dali was moved since the disaster — from the middle of the Patapsco River to the Port of Baltimore and then from Baltimore to Norfolk — it departed a few days later than initially expected.

The Dali had just left Baltimore in the early morning of March 26, anticipating a monthlong journey to Sri Lanka, when it lost power. Tugboats had helped the ship leave the port, but they were no longer attached to the vessel, and although pilots ordered an anchor drop as the ship headed toward a Key Bridge support, that last-ditch effort couldn’t alter the 100,000-ton vessel’s trajectory.

The ship plowed into the pier, toppling the bridge and killing six construction workers who had been fixing potholes on the span. Steel and roadway littered the Patapsco River, temporarily closing the shipping channel and necessitating a salvage that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

For nearly two months, the Dali sat in the Patapsco River, amid the cleanup, but after explosives were used to cut up a huge piece of bridge sitting atop the vessel, the ship was refloated and towed back to the Port of Baltimore in May. In June, the ship, escorted by four tugboats, made a slow, 23-hour trip to Norfolk.

By late August, the ship was nearly unrecognizable as all of its thousands of containers had been removed, according to footage from Norfolk TV station WTKR.

The ship’s owners declared “general average” after the calamity, an ancient maritime law that requires cargo owners to chip in on the cost of salvage before they can receive their cargo. The Dali was being chartered by Danish shipper Maersk at the time of the disaster, and Maersk spokesperson Kevin Doell told The Baltimore Sun in an email Wednesday that the shipper “has worked to achieve the release of its customers containers from the owner’s custody.”

The Dali’s Singaporean owner and manager — Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, respectively — have sought to limit their liability in the bridge calamity, but claimants, including the City of Baltimore and, more recently, a small propane distributing company, have filed suit against them.

People with claims against the ship’s owner and manager have until Sept. 24 to file claims in federal court, but an email reviewed by The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday shows an effort to extend that deadline by four months.

Several law and maritime firms — which stated they were representing roughly $42 million in cargo that was aboard the Dali at the time of the crash — have informally requested to push the claims deadline to Jan. 24 so they have time to assess damage to the ship’s containers and cargo, according to the email.

“The majority of the containers were only discharged from the Dali at the end of August and a significant percentage of them will not be delivered to destination until after the current deadline for the lodging of claims against the limitation fund,” the group wrote.

The firms asked parties to the litigation to indicate by Monday whether they object to a January deadline. The group is also seeking voluntary agreement from the Dali’s owners, according to the email.

Asked why the ship is heading to China, Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine spokesperson Darrell Wilson declined to comment. However, shipping experts have long anticipated that the damaged vessel would ultimately receive its most extensive repairs overseas.

When the Ever Given — the 1,312-foot vessel that got stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021, stalling the international supply chain — needed repairs later that year, it received them in a dry dock in Qingdao, China.

Asked by The Baltimore Sun, Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner who hosts the YouTube show “What’s Going On With Shipping?”, predicted that upon the Dali’s arrival in China, there would be an entirely new bow fabricated to replace the damaged one on the current ship.

“They will cut the bow off and put on a new one,” he said.

The state’s top prosecutor is now proposing to split the money 70/30, with the majority going to local subdivisions such as county governments. The agreement would incorporate “the same intrastate allocation as in prior settlements,” according to an Aug. 23 letter from the office.

The state’s share of the $1.2 billion Kroger settlement with state and local governments over 11 years is small. It’s being divided among 33 states and Maryland is getting $13 million, reflecting the grocer’s small footprint in the state, mostly about 18 Harris Teeter stores.

The Attorney General’s Office did not comment on the proposed allocation plan, but said in a statement that “100% of the money from the Kroger settlement will be used for opioid-related measures throughout Maryland.”

Previous opioid settlements to Maryland have used a 70/30 split, with 70% of the funds going to local subdivisions and 30% staying with the state. Some of the total goes directly to the state and local governments, while 60% is allocated to a Targeted Abatement Fund that is distributed through a state-run grant program. The majority of those grants must go to local governments.

Maryland joined a nationwide settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three major opioid distributors, McKesson, AmeriSourceBergen, and Cardinal Health, two years ago, though Baltimore City has chosen to go it alone against those firms. The $26 billion global settlement will pay out nearly $400 million to Maryland over 18 years. The state won another $12 million as part of a settlement with the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company for its role in developing opioid marketing plans.

Other states are distributing their opioid settlement money differently. Some split the money evenly between state and local governments, while others keep most of the money at the state level. The national Kroger settlement proposes a default 50/50 split, but that’s not required as part of the deal.

Michael Sanderson, the executive director of the Maryland Association of Counties, said the AG’s office may seek different allocations in settlements that involve smaller opioid companies without a statewide impact.

“But there’s now a consensus that this Kroger settlement remained in the category of statewide, with a statewide footprint,” he said.

Counties and local governments have until Sept. 11 to sign on to the Kroger settlement.

States and local governments are set to receive millions of dollars nationwide as pharmaceutical companies settle lawsuits over their marketing and distribution of addictive opioid painkillers. Allocating the money has generated controversy. Some states have put it toward law enforcement, while some advocacy groups say it should only go to public health measures.

Local governments have argued they need the money because they bear the brunt of opioid-related expenses, such as handling emergency calls for overdoses.

Baltimore City rolled out a plan for managing its separate settlement money last week. The city’s ongoing lawsuit against the opioid companies that have not settled is set to go to trial later this month. The city already has received more than $240 million through settlements with drug companies — most recently $152.5 million from the drug distributor Cardinal Health.

“You do what I say now.”

“I told you I have a breaking point and you are dangerously close.”

The responses from a 21-year-old former Gilman School student were pleading, desperate.

“I’ll literally do anything.”

“I’m begging you.”

A federal jury heard hundreds of text messages Tuesday between the former teacher, 40-year-old Christopher K. Bendann, and the man who says Bendann began sexually abusing him when he was 15 years old.

Bendann is on trial this week on charges of sexual exploitation of a child, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking. Though Bendann has conceded he cyberstalked the boy after he turned 18, prosecutors still read from more than 700 pages of text messages between the two between May and December of 2022.

The texts, prosecutors say, show how Bendann’s conduct forced the man to send him nude pictures and videos by threatening to make their previous exchanges public. Bendann, according to the evidence, created a fake Instagram account with the man’s nude photographs and used it to reach out to the man’s girlfriend and college friends if the man stopped texting or Snapchatting him.

The texts were nearly constant. If the man did not answer Bendann’s texts, Bendann would text him over and over: “Answer.” “Answer.” “Answer.”

And Bendann would threaten the man, telling him that he would send explicit photos to people he knew if the man did not keep in touch, send more videos and appear enthusiastic.

“You better put out … and not be miserable,” Bendann wrote in one.

“Enjoy explaining your pics on Insta,” he wrote in another.

Prosecutors rested late Tuesday after presenting three days of evidence, including the man’s testimony. The Baltimore Sun is not naming the man because he says he is a victim of sexual abuse.

Bendann appears likely to take the stand Wednesday. He said in court Tuesday evening that he had been advised to say he would “sleep on it,” but he and his attorneys have indicated throughout the case that he would testify in his own defense.

One of Bendann’s defense attorneys, Gary Proctor, said early Tuesday afternoon that he expects Bendann to testify “that he had an ongoing sexual relationship” with the man “when they were both adults.”

“Mr. Bendann should be able to tell his story to the jury,” Proctor said.

The defense will not be allowed to argue that any sexual activity before the man turned 18 was consensual, but Bendann will be allowed to discuss his relationship with the man on the stand following a ruling from Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar. In sex offense cases, evidence of a victim’s prior sexual activities or predisposition are generally not allowed.

“This is a bit of a minefield,” said Bredar, warning that he will admonish the defense during Bendann’s testimony if necessary.

Bendann’s other court-appointed defense lawyer, Christopher Nieto, told jurors in his opening statement last week that the sexual relationship between Bendann and the accuser began only after the man turned 18, and that the man “panicked” and misrepresented how the relationship started when his girlfriend found their texts.

The man, however, told jurors last week that Bendann would pick him up from parties or take him to McDonald’s when he was about 15 and eventually began suggesting the boy take off his clothes or touch himself. Bendann also began touching the boy, according to the testimony, and also would abuse him in showers at the homes of other Gilman families where Bendann sometimes house-sat.

Bendann, a middle-school teacher at Gilman, was the boy’s adviser when he was in eighth grade.

The abuse continued after the man graduated Gilman and went to college, he said, because of Bendann’s threats.

Toward the end of the text exchanges read in court, the man became more assertive with Bendann.

“You have until 12 noon tomorrow to apologize for the five years you forced me to do things I did not want to do,” the man wrote in one text, responding to threats from Bendann.

“You are a sick person that should be lucky I haven’t gone to the police,” he wrote.

Bendann responded that he had videos of the man telling Bendann to perform sex acts.

“It’s all fun and games until you realize I was 16 in those videos,” the man replied.

On Monday, the government played several sexually explicit videos of the teen that, according to an FBI digital forensics expert, were taken before he turned 18. The videos’ metadata indicates the date they were created as well as their location and other information.

The first video, which was taken when the man was 16, according to the metadata, showed him nude from the waist down and masturbating in the passenger seat of Bendann’s vehicle.

Bendann taught at the private all-boys Gilman School in North Baltimore until early last year, when he was fired amid reports that he had given students alcohol and taken them to run “naked laps” in a park. Two young men testified Tuesday that they recalled participating in the naked runs, which they said were Bendann’s suggestion.

The young men, who also attended Gilman with the man at the center of the case, said Bendann also would sometimes ask them “suggestive” questions over Snapchat at night, asking whether they were wearing shirts or pants.

“I kind of tried to avoid it,” one testified. “I always thought it was a little weird.”

Another testified that Bendann once tried to “wrestle” with him after he got out of a shower wearing only a towel. When the teen said no, Bendann grabbed the towel and yanked it, ripping it nearly in half, according to the testimony. Bendann, who was house-sitting for the teen’s family, was fully clothed and lying on the boy’s bed when he got out of the shower, the young man testified.

The defense has portrayed the Gilman community as exclusive and unwelcoming to gay men like Bendann.

Bendann said previously that he wished to skip parts of his trial. His refusal to leave the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore delayed jury selection by several hours last week. He has attended each day of the trial so far.

The videos were recovered from a folder of deleted files that FBI agents located when they searched an iCloud account belonging to the teacher, 40-year-old Christopher K. Bendann, according to evidence presented in court.

Jurors were visibly uncomfortable during the videos, some of which were several minutes long. The videos were shown to jurors but hidden from the courtroom gallery to protect the privacy of the teen, who is now an adult and testified against Bendann on Friday.

The first video was taken when the man was 16, according to metadata stored with the files and recovered by the FBI. It shows him nude from the waist down in the passenger seat of Bendann’s vehicle. Bendann’s voice was audible during parts of the video, which showed the teen masturbating, according to FBI Special Agent Calista Walker. Walker testified about the content of the videos before they were shown to jurors.

Now 23, the man shown in the videos told jurors last week that Bendann would sometimes give him rides to McDonald’s or pick him up from parties where he had been drinking. He said he was 15 when Bendann began telling the teen that he should take his clothes off and touch himself. Then Bendann started touching him, too, he said.

The Baltimore Sun is not naming the man because he says he is a victim of sexual abuse.

Bendann’s voice was audible in several of the videos shown Monday, which included some taken in showers at the homes of various Gilman families where Bendann sometimes house-sat. He also was visible in some of the videos, Walker testified. Bendann sometimes allowed teens to gather at homes where he house-sat and would summon the boy upstairs to join him in the bathroom, according to the man’s testimony.

Bendann does not deny that he had a sexual relationship with the teen, his defense attorney Christopher Nieto told jurors last week. But he contends the relationship began after the man turned 18, and that the man lied about how the relationship started after his girlfriend confronted him about his ongoing messages with Bendann. Bendann is 15 years older than the man and advised him when he was in eighth grade at the Gilman School.

The man testified that Bendann threatened to expose nude photographs of him to force a continued relationship after he graduated Gilman and left for college. Bendann taught at the private all-boys school in North Baltimore until early last year, when he was fired amid reports that he had given students alcohol and taken them to run “naked laps” in a park.

Two former Gilman students who attended the school during the same years as the man both testified Monday that they recalled Bendann driving them to run a “naked lap” at Meadowood Regional Park. The outings were presented as a trade: Bendann would drive the boys to McDonald’s, or pick them up from a party, and they would run a naked lap in exchange.

“If he had picked us up from somewhere, it was kind of like ‘I did this for you, so you have to do this back,'” one of the young men testified.

The men also said they interacted with Bendann on social media after they left Gilman’s middle school, where Bendann taught, and moved on to high school. Bendann kept in frequent contact with them on Snapchat, where messages disappear after a certain period of time. One of the men said Bendann sometimes messaged him at night during that time and occasionally questioned why the teen was wearing a shirt in his photographs.

The government also presented testimony from two parents whose sons attended Gilman during the late 2010s. Both hired Bendann to house-sit or babysit occasionally, tasks he was known for in the Gilman community.

“I had great trust in him,” one of the witnesses said.

Bendann faces federal charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking. The defense has conceded the cyberstalking charge, which focuses on a period of time after the teen turned 18.

The videos made up the bulk of Monday’s evidence. All five videos were recovered from a file of content that had been deleted from Bendann’s phone, according to FBI agents’ testimony. Duplicate versions of the files also were recovered from iPhone “backups” stored on Bendann’s laptops.

All five videos were created before the man at the center of the case turned 18, the agents said, citing metadata connected to the files.

The dates, times and locations of the videos are consistent with other evidence in the case, such as personal calendars where Bendann noted his house-sitting jobs. On one weekend where he wrote that he was house-sitting for a specific family, that family’s bathroom could be seen in the background of an explicit video recovered from Bendann’s phone.

Those details are key to the prosecution’s case because the defense may argue that the dates contained in the videos’ metadata are inaccurate and that the videos actually were made after the teenager turned 18.

The videos shown in court underscored the challenges of trying child pornography cases, which by their nature involve sensitive, sexually explicit evidence and a vulnerable victim. Child pornography cases rarely go to trial, according to federal sentencing data.

Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar ordered prosecutors to shield the videos so they could not be viewed from the courtroom gallery. The audio could be heard throughout the courtroom but only jurors and attorneys could see the visual component.

The accuser was not present in the courtroom while the videos were played. His father, who was a witness for the prosecution, sat in court while the videos played, occasionally placing a hand over his face.

Jurors could be seen looking away from the videos at times or focusing their attention on written transcripts they had been provided to make out the audio.

Bendann watched the videos and occasionally took notes or conferred with his lawyers. He appeared to become agitated during a lengthy private discussion between the attorneys about a video that showed Bendann and the teenager in a shower together.

In a pause in the discussion, Bredar told Nieto to “ask your client to please compose himself.”

The prosecution is expected to rest Tuesday. Bendann has said he wishes to testify, and Nieto said Monday that the defense only anticipates putting on one witness, “if any.”

The man, whom The Baltimore Sun is not naming because he says he is a sexual abuse victim, described in painstaking detail how the defendant on trial, 40-year-old Christopher K. Bendann, began instructing him to take off his clothes in Bendann’s car when he was a teen.

“It kept getting worse and worse,” the man testified. “Then it turned into him touching me.”

The man is the central witness against Bendann as he faces trial this week on charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking.

Bendann was present in court Friday after initially saying he wanted to skip parts of his trial. His refusal to leave the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore on Wednesday delayed jury selection by several hours.

Bendann’s defense lawyer, Christopher Nieto, told jurors in his opening statement that Bendann admits to having a sexual relationship with the man, but contends it began after the teen turned 18 years old. Bendann is more than 15 years older than the man and was his teacher and adviser at Gilman when the boy was in eighth grade.

Nieto told jurors that when the man’s girlfriend found out about the relationship with Bendann, the man “panicked” and misrepresented how the relationship started.

“The entire Gilman community turned against” Bendann after that, Nieto said.

The defense is not disputing that Bendann cyberstalked the teen after he left for college, but Nieto argued the relationship was between adults and was one of Bendann’s first romantic partnerships.

“When this friendship evolved into a romantic relationship, (the man) was over the age of 18,” said Nieto, who is court-appointed.

Testimony at Bendann’s trial Friday portrayed him as a popular, well-liked teacher who was magnetic to the middle school students he taught.

“It was as if he was a pied piper,” said the man’s mother, who was the first witness for the prosecution.

She and her husband knew Bendann had a friendly relationship with their son. It was not until years later, when their son was in college, that they would learn about the abuse, she testified.

Her son testified that Bendann often organized outings with groups of teens, which led to Bendann picking the boys up from parties where they had been drinking. Bendann sometimes suggested they run “naked laps” at a park in exchange for the favor, he testified.

The man was 15 at the time. Eventually, Bendann started giving the boy rides one-on-one and taking him to McDonald’s. Bendann began telling the teen if they went to McDonald’s, he had to be naked in Bendann’s car, the man testified. From there, he said, the abuse escalated. Bendann told him to touch himself, then began touching the boy, too. Bendann took pictures and videos, some of which were shown in court Friday.

Bendann also often house-sat for other families in the Gilman community. He would let teens gather at those houses and then summon the boy upstairs to join him in the bathroom, where Bendann would abuse him in the shower, according to the testimony. In one photograph shown in court, Bendann’s face is visible next to the teen’s body.

As a teen, the man did not tell anyone about the abuse, he testified. When he tried to tell Bendann to stop, Bendann threatened to make public the sexual photographs he had taken of the boy, he said.

“Being a kid that’s being touched by a teacher, it’s not something to be proud of,” he said.

The exploitation continued after the man graduated from Gilman and went to college, he said. Bendann stayed in frequent communication with him and threatened to expose the explicit photographs if the man did not keep in touch and send more images.

The man said that when he tried to get Bendann to stop, Bendann would suggest “deals:” The man had to provide a certain number of nude photographs, for example, or message Bendann on Snapchat, and then Bendann would end the sexual part of their relationship. But Bendann never honored the deals, the man said.

“I’d have to be happy, smile in the pictures, make it seem like I wanted this,” the man told jurors.

He said Bendann required him to initiate sexual conversations sometimes as part of the deals.

Bendann also created a fake Instagram account using naked photographs of the man, according to the testimony, and used it to reach out to the man’s college friends if the man did not keep responding to Bendann.

“There wasn’t a time where I wanted it to be happening, but I felt like I had to or it would never end,” the man testified.

Eventually, the man’s girlfriend discovered his messages with Bendann and confronted him.

He told her that he’d been “getting sexually abused for five years, six years, and was scared … and didn’t know what to do,” he said. He told her he was trying to work out a deal to end the abuse, but it continued even after that point, he said.

Bendann was fired from the private all-boys Gilman School in North Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood in early 2023 following reports that he had given alcohol to teenagers and asked them to run naked in front of him at a park.

That’s also when the man finally told his parents what had happened, they testified. He spoke with investigators soon after.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen E. McGuinn told jurors in her opening statement that the man will be “forever influenced” by Bendann’s abuse.

“A teacher affects eternity,” McGuinn said. “He can never know where his influence ends.”

Gilman School administrators testified that they suspended Bendann in January 2023 after receiving allegations about the “naked laps” and terminated him soon after. Bendann told school officials that the allegations were false and claimed he was being persecuted because he is Asian, according to the testimony.

Nieto worked to portray the school as an insular community that was not always welcoming. Gilman hired an outside consulting firm in 2020 to investigate sexual abuse allegations against a now-deceased teacher from decades earlier; the school told parents in a letter that the firm did not receive any allegations against current employees, which Bendann’s attorneys noted in court.

Testimony in the case will continue Monday. The trial is expected to last for up to two weeks.

Opening statements are set to begin Friday morning. The defendant, 40-year-old Christopher K. Bendann, faces charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking.

Jury selection began Wednesday but was delayed for several hours when Bendann refused to leave the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore, where he has been incarcerated pretrial, to come to court. After Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar ordered Bendann to appear, Bendann relented but said in court that he would like to skip certain parts of the trial, including testimony by government agents.

Bredar granted the request, telling Bendann he can choose which days he attends the trial. Bendann was in court Thursday for the second day of jury selection. He said he intends to testify and has maintained his innocence.

Federal prosecutor have said that investigators found videos linked to Bendann’s personal email account that depicted a child’s genitals and, in at least one video, showed Bendann touching the child. Bendann also deleted the videos after he learned his behavior had been reported, prosecutors say. Bendann allegedly met the boy when he was a middle schooler at Gilman.

The teen, now an adult, is expected to testify Friday.

Bendann was fired last year from the private all-boys institution in North Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood following reports that he had given alcohol to teenagers and asked them to run naked in front of him at a park in 2021.