Jury begins deliberations in trial of former Gilman School teacher accused of sexual abuse

The federal trial of a former Gilman School teacher accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy concluded Wednesday afternoon after Christopher K. Bendann decided not to testify.

Bendann, 40, was fired in 2023 from the private boys’ school in Roland Park in North Baltimore, where he was a teacher and counselor, after allegations surfaced that in 2021 he gave students alcohol and took them to parks at night to run “naked laps.”

The former teacher faces federal charges of sexual exploitation of a child, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking. His defense team admitted to filing the cyberstalking charge, which stemmed from the man turning 18.

A jury is expected to hear the case this afternoon.

The government’s case lasted three days and included testimony from Bendann’s accuser, now a 23-year-old man. The defense rested Wednesday without calling any witnesses. Bendann said Tuesday night that he would “sleep on it” about whether to testify. Bendann’s attorney, Gary Proctor, suggested earlier Tuesday that Bendann would testify that he had had a sexual relationship with his accuser when both men were adults.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Hagan flatly disputed that description in her closing arguments Wednesday. She said Bendann’s former student was not “in a relationship.” Instead, “he was in hell,” she told the jury.

Last week, the jury heard from Bendann’s accuser, who said that when he was 15, Bendann began picking him up at parties, taking him to McDonald’s and making suggestions that he take off his clothes or touch himself. The prosecutor said Bendann, who was his mentor in the eighth grade, later began abusing him, including at the homes of other Gilman families where Bendann was house-sitting. The former teacher later threatened to release videos and photos of the man publicly or send them to his friends and family, prosecutors said.

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

Prosecutors played nude videos of the then-teenage boy that the FBI recovered from Bendann’s iCloud account for jurors. Metadata on the videos indicates the first was made when the teen was 16, they said. The government presented other evidence, including Bendann’s weekly calendars and testimony from Bendann’s parents, that prosecutors said proved the videos were made on specific dates when the teen was a minor.

Christopher Nieto, Bendann’s other court-appointed attorney, told jurors Wednesday that Bendann “clearly lost his mind” after the young man left for college, the time of the cyberstalking charges. Nieto argued that the student’s concerned and observant parents and friends would have noticed all the signs of sexual abuse when the teen was still in high school, if there were any signs at all.

“They didn’t see anything, they didn’t see anything wrong. That’s because there was nothing going on,” said Nieto, who insisted the “relationship blossomed” after the teen turned 18.

He also tried to cast doubt on the reliability of the metadata accompanying the videos, which showed that the videos had been made when the teenager was still a minor.

When his trial began last week, Bendann initially refused to leave his cell at the Chesapeake Detention Center until the judge hearing the case ordered him to appear in court.