Former Gilman School Teacher Chris Bendann: Former Student Testifies About Sexual Abuse

The sexual exploitation, the man testified, began when Chris Bendann picked him up after a night out.

He was 15 at the time and attended Gilman School, a private, independent boys’ school in Baltimore’s Roland Park. Bendann, he said, would give him and his friends rides and take them to Meadowood Regional Park or a hill near St. Paul’s Schools to run around naked.

Then Bendann started taking him to McDonald’s alone. The behavior, he said, “just got worse and worse.”

At first, the man testified, he watched porn in front of his teacher and masturbated. Eventually, Bendann touched his genitals in a parking lot or at a house where he was babysitting.

“Did you want to do these things?” asked Assistant District Attorney Colleen McGuinn.

“No,” the man replied.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

“I was threatened,” he replied.

The now 23-year-old man testified for more than two hours Friday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, recounting how the sexual abuse and extortion began, escalated and continued into his early adulthood, when federal prosecutors began to build their case. Bendann, 40, of Baltimore, is charged with sexual exploitation of a child, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking.

The Baltimore Banner does not identify individuals who report sexual abuse without their consent.

In his opening statement, Christopher Nieto, one of Bendann’s attorneys, said his client is not guilty of sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography.

He said none of the photos shown in court were taken before the man turned 18.

But Nieto admitted his client is guilty of cyberstalking, describing the behavior as “embarrassingly deplorable.”

“Mr. Bendann didn’t have a lot of experience with romantic relationships,” Nieto said. “His feelings clearly got the better of him.”

The man panicked after his girlfriend discovered their relationship and lied about how it started, Nieto said. Members of the school community, he said, closed in on the vehicles, ostracized his client and turned on him to protect their own.

The man testified that Bendann was his teacher, coach and counselor in eighth grade.

He seemed like a “cool guy.” They texted, went to breakfast, and hung out.

His mother said it was as if Bendann were a “Pied Piper of Hamelin.” Students attending his high school, she testified, were curious to get to know him.

“I trusted him implicitly,” she said, referring to Bendann almost exclusively as “the suspect” during her testimony.

Bendann, the man said, would take him in. He estimated he was 15 or 16 at the time.

Prosecutors showed the jury several sexually explicit images, including one showing Bendann’s face.

When the man went to college, he said, he felt compelled to keep in touch with his former teacher. Bendann would constantly text him if he didn’t respond, he testified, threatening to make the intimate images public.

The man said he would make what he described as deals. He testified that he would send Bendann a certain number of nude photos and videos in which he would have to smile and look happy.

But nothing was ever satisfying.

“Whatever the suspect wanted,” the man testified, “he told me to do.”

Bendann, he said, created a fake Instagram page that contained some of those images — and threatened to make them public. At one point, he did just that.

The man’s girlfriend eventually stumbled upon everything.

Then he explained to her that the sexual abuse had been going on for five or six years and that he was afraid, the man testified. But he lied and told her it was almost over.

“I thought it would somehow stop everything,” he testified. “It just didn’t.”

In 2023 it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Gilman Principal Henry PA Smyth and Human Resources Director Angela Johnson spoke to Bendann after the school received an allegation about children running around naked. They suspended him.

The school then conducted its own investigation and fired Bendann via Zoom four days later.

Meanwhile, the man testified that he told his father everything. He then spoke to the FBI and the Baltimore County Police Department.

Johnson testified that Bendann denied the allegations and accused the school of persecuting him because he was Asian. He asked who made the allegations.

Bendann, she said, then appeared to be crying.

Assistant District Attorney Kim Hagan asked Johnson why she said it sounded like Bendann was crying.

“Because there were no tears,” she said.