Prosecutors show videos of teen at trial of former Gilman School teacher on sexual abuse charges

A federal grand jury on Monday viewed several videos of a naked teenager as part of the trial against a former Gilman School teacher accused of sexually abusing the boy, a trial that underscored the difficulty of bringing child pornography charges to trial.

The videos were found in a deleted files folder that FBI agents found 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 lasted several minutes. 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 naked from the waist down in the passenger seat of Bendann’s vehicle. Bendann’s voice was audible during portions of the video in which the teen masturbated, according to FBI Special Agent Calista Walker. Walker testified about the content of the videos before they were shown to jurors.

The man, now 23, told jurors last week that Bendann sometimes drove him to McDonald’s or picked him up from parties where he had been drinking. He said he was 15 when Bendann began telling the teen to take off his clothes and touch himself. That’s when Bendann started touching him, 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, including some taken in showers at the homes of various Gilman families where Bendann sometimes house-sat. He was also visible in some of the videos, Walker testified. Bendann would sometimes have teenagers gather at the homes he was house-sitting and call the boy upstairs to join him in the bathroom, according to the man’s testimony.

Bendann does not deny having a sexual relationship with the teen, his attorney Christopher Nieto told the jury last week. But he claims the relationship began after the man turned 18, and that the man lied about how the relationship began after his girlfriend confronted him about his constant texting with Bendann. Bendann, who is 15 years older than the man and advised him when he was in the eighth grade at Gilman School, said he lied about it.

The man testified that Bendann threatened to publish nude photos of him to force a continuation of the relationship after he graduated from Gilman and left for college. Bendann taught at the all-boys private school in North Baltimore until early last year, when he was fired after reports that he had plied students with alcohol and taken them for “naked runs” in a park.

Two former Gilman students who attended Gilman during the same years as the man both testified Monday that they remembered Bendann driving them to Meadowood Regional Park to run a “naked lap.” 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 return.

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

The men also said they communicated with Bendann on social media after they left Gilman’s Middle School, where Bendann taught, and entered high school. Bendann kept in touch with them regularly via Snapchat, where messages disappear after a certain period of time. One of the men said Bendann would sometimes message him at night during that time, occasionally asking why the teen was wearing a shirt in his photos.

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

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

Bendann faces federal charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking. The defense admitted the cyberstalking charge, which focuses on a period 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 made before the man at the center of the case turned 18, officers said, citing metadata associated with the files.

The dates, times and locations of the videos match other evidence in the case, including personal diaries in which Bendann recorded his house-sitting jobs. On one weekend when he listed himself as house-sitting for a specific family, that family’s bathroom was visible in the background of an explicit video recovered from Bendann’s phone.

These details are critical to the prosecution’s case, because the defense could argue that the dates in the videos’ metadata are incorrect and that the videos were actually taken after the teen turned 18.

The videos shown in court underscored the challenges of handling 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 records.

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

The prosecutor was not in the courtroom when the videos were played. His father, who was a witness for the prosecution, sat in the courtroom as the videos played, occasionally putting a hand to his face.

At times, jurors were seen averting their gaze from the video footage or focusing on the written transcripts they had been given to understand the audio.

Bendann watched the videos, occasionally taking notes or consulting with his lawyers. He appeared to become agitated during a long private conversation between the lawyers about a video of Bendann and the teen in the shower together.

During a break in the argument, Bredar said to Nieto: “Ask your client to calm himself down.”

The prosecution is expected to rest Tuesday. Bendann has said he wants to testify, and Nieto said Monday the defense expects only one witness, “if there is one.”