A 23-year-old man told a federal jury Friday that he was just 15 when his teacher and mentor at Baltimore’s prestigious Gilman School began sexually abusing him.
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.
