BALTIMORE — A former Gilman School teacher set to face trial Wednesday on charges that he sexually abused a teenage student refused to leave his detention facility and report for court, the judge handling the case said.

The defendant, Christopher K. Bendann, 40, declined to accompany U.S. Marshals when they traveled to the Chesapeake Detention Center in Baltimore this morning to pick up Bendann for the first day of his trial.

More than 70 jurors are assembled and waiting for jury selection to begin, Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar said. Bredar ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to send deputies and tell Bendann he needs to appear for trial.

Bendann’s attorney, Christopher Nieto, recently contacted the jail and asked that Bendann be assessed for suicidal ideation. The defense is not claiming that Bendann is incompetent to face trial, though.

“You can be competent and nevertheless be contemplating suicide,” said Gary Proctor, Bendann’s other attorney.

Proctor said that forcing Bendann to leave his cell could irreparably harm the attorney-client relationship. The fact that Bendann refused to appear suggests he does not have faith in his lawyers, Proctor said in court.

But Bredar said defendants must appear for trial, at least at the beginning.

“We’re prepared to start this trial,” the judge said.

Bendann faces federal charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking. He was indicted a year ago after federal authorities picked up the case from Baltimore County, where Bendann was first charged.

According to the indictment, investigators recovered videos linked to Bendann’s personal email account that depicted a child’s genitals and, in at least one video, showed Bendann touching the child. Bendann also deleted the videos after he learned his conduct had been reported, prosecutors said.

Bendann worked at the Gilman School, a private all-boys school in North Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood, until he was fired last year following reports that he had given children alcohol, brought them to St. Paul’s School and Meadowood Regional Park and asked them to run naked in front of him in 2021, according to charging documents.

Bendann has maintained his innocence, claiming once outside the Baltimore County Courthouse that Gilman School and Baltimore County were “doing their best to defame” him.

In court records, prosecutors say that Bendann met the alleged victim when the child attended middle school at Gilman. On one occasion, Bendann drove to pick up the child from a party and told the boy that he “owed” Bendann for the ride home; Bendann told the child, who was by then 15 or 16, to get naked and masturbate, prosecutors wrote.

The abuse continued and intensified, with Bendann sometimes making videos and threatening to expose the sexual abuse images if the teen did not continue to comply, according to prosecutors’ request to keep Bendann incarcerated before his trial. Bendann remains in custody.

“Minor Victim tried desperately to end the cycle, but Bendann would manipulate him and coerce him into providing more images and videos,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen McGuinn wrote.

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