Content warning: This story contains details about allegations of sexual abuse.
One video depicts the student naked from the waist down inside an SUV touching himself. Another shows him bathing. And yet another portrays his eighth-grade teacher washing him inside the shower.
At the time, the student was 16 or 17.
FBI Special Agent Calista Walker on Monday gave those brief descriptions of what federal prosecutors allege the videos depict before they played them to the jury in the trial of Chris Bendann, a former teacher at the Gilman School who’s accused of sexually abusing a student.
Bendann, 40, of Baltimore, is charged in U.S. District Court in Baltimore with sexual exploitation of a child, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking. He worked at the private, independent all-boys school in Roland Park from 2007 to 2023.
His attorneys, Christopher Nieto and Gary Proctor, assert that the videos depict the student after he turned 18.
The student has since graduated from the Gilman School. He’s now 23.
The Baltimore Banner does not identify people without their permission who report that they’re survivors of sexual abuse.
Prosecutors went one by one through eight videos, which another FBI special agent, Eric Oberly, testified that he recovered off an iCloud account that belonged to Bendann. He can be heard in most of them and seen on-screen in some.
Oberly testified that he found duplicates on a Dell Inspiron 15 and Sony VAIO laptop that investigators took from Bendann’s home while executing a search and seizure warrant.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen McGuinn asked about the dates the videos were taken, the age the student was at the time and the cellphone used to record them.
“One clip, ma’am?” U.S. Senior District Judge James K. Bredar asked.
“Yes,” McGuinn replied.
“You may play it,” Bredar continued.
For some of the videos, the jury watched them while following along with transcripts contained in white binders that were emblazoned with the seal of the U.S. Department of Justice.
McGuinn presented evidence about how the metadata for some of the videos included GPS coordinates. They matched up with witness testimony and notes that Bendann left in day planners about where he was housesitting those days for families.
She displayed side-by-side still images from the videos, and pictures that law enforcement took inside those homes as part of the investigation.
Toward the end of the final video, Bredar abruptly called for a break, sent the jury out of the courtroom and pressed prosecutors about whether they needed to play the rest.
He conferred multiple times with the attorneys through headsets while white noise blanketed the courtroom.
“Private channel,” Bredar instructed.
Following a 13-minute recess, jurors watched the remainder of the last clip. They also heard testimony about some of the Google searches that Bendann had conducted throughout the years, which included, “naked blonde boys,” “boys naked outside” and “naked boys in public.”
The FBI also discovered images of the student that were not sexually explicit.
They included a photo of him as a younger child. A picture of him sitting in a restaurant at a booth. And an image of his Maryland learner’s permit.
