The texts from the teacher were threatening, obsessive, controlling.

“You do what I say now.”

“I told you I have a breaking point and you are dangerously close.”

The responses from a 21-year-old former Gilman School student were pleading, desperate.

“I’ll literally do anything.”

“I’m begging you.”

A federal jury heard hundreds of text messages Tuesday between the former teacher, 40-year-old Christopher K. Bendann, and the man who says Bendann began sexually abusing him when he was 15 years old.

Bendann is on trial this week on charges of sexual exploitation of a child, possession of child pornography and cyberstalking. Though Bendann has conceded he cyberstalked the boy after he turned 18, prosecutors still read from more than 700 pages of text messages between the two between May and December of 2022.

The texts, prosecutors say, show how Bendann’s conduct forced the man to send him nude pictures and videos by threatening to make their previous exchanges public. Bendann, according to the evidence, created a fake Instagram account with the man’s nude photographs and used it to reach out to the man’s girlfriend and college friends if the man stopped texting or Snapchatting him.

The texts were nearly constant. If the man did not answer Bendann’s texts, Bendann would text him over and over: “Answer.” “Answer.” “Answer.”

And Bendann would threaten the man, telling him that he would send explicit photos to people he knew if the man did not keep in touch, send more videos and appear enthusiastic.

“You better put out … and not be miserable,” Bendann wrote in one.

“Enjoy explaining your pics on Insta,” he wrote in another. Prosecutors rested late Tuesday after presenting three days of evidence, including the man’s testimony. The Baltimore Sun is not naming the man because he says he is a victim of sexual abuse.

Bendann appears likely to take the stand Wednesday. He said in court Tuesday evening that he had been advised to say he would “sleep on it,” but he and his attorneys have indicated throughout the case that he would testify in his own defense.

One of Bendann’s defense attorneys, Gary Proctor, said early Tuesday afternoon that he expects Bendann to testify “that he had an ongoing sexual relationship” with the man “when they were both adults.”

“Mr. Bendann should be able to tell his story to the jury,” Proctor said.

The defense will not be allowed to argue that any sexual activity before the man turned 18 was consensual, but Bendann will be allowed to discuss his relationship with the man on the stand following a ruling from Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar. In sex offense cases, evidence of a victim’s prior sexual activities or predisposition are generally not allowed.

“This is a bit of a minefield,” said Bredar, warning that he will admonish the defense during Bendann’s testimony if necessary.

Bendann’s other court-appointed defense lawyer, Christopher Nieto, told jurors in his opening statement last week that the sexual relationship between Bendann and the accuser began only after the man turned 18, and that the man “panicked” and misrepresented how the relationship started when his girlfriend found their texts.

The man, however, told jurors last week that Bendann would pick him up from parties or take him to McDonald’s when he was about 15 and eventually began suggesting the boy take off his clothes or touch himself. Bendann also began touching the boy, according to the testimony, and also would abuse him in showers at the homes of other Gilman families where Bendann sometimes house-sat.

Bendann, a middle-school teacher at Gilman, was the boy’s adviser when he was in eighth grade.

The abuse continued after the man graduated Gilman and went to college, he said, because of Bendann’s threats.

Toward the end of the text exchanges read in court, the man became more assertive with Bendann.

“You have until 12 noon tomorrow to apologize for the five years you forced me to do things I did not want to do,” the man wrote in one text, responding to threats from Bendann.

“You are a sick person that should be lucky I haven’t gone to the police,” he wrote.

Bendann responded that he had videos of the man telling Bendann to perform sex acts.

“It’s all fun and games until you realize I was 16 in those videos,” the man replied.

On Monday, the government played several sexually explicit videos of the teen that, according to an FBI digital forensics expert, were taken before he turned 18. The videos’ metadata indicates the date they were created as well as their location and other information.

The first video, which was taken when the man was 16, according to the metadata, showed him nude from the waist down and masturbating in the passenger seat of Bendann’s vehicle.

Bendann taught at the private all-boys Gilman School in North Baltimore until early last year, when he was fired amid reports that he had given students alcohol and taken them to run “naked laps” in a park. Two young men testified Tuesday that they recalled participating in the naked runs, which they said were Bendann’s suggestion.

The young men, who also attended Gilman with the man at the center of the case, said Bendann also would sometimes ask them “suggestive” questions over Snapchat at night, asking whether they were wearing shirts or pants.

“I kind of tried to avoid it,” one testified. “I always thought it was a little weird.”

Another testified that Bendann once tried to “wrestle” with him after he got out of a shower wearing only a towel. When the teen said no, Bendann grabbed the towel and yanked it, ripping it nearly in half, according to the testimony. Bendann, who was house-sitting for the teen’s family, was fully clothed and lying on the boy’s bed when he got out of the shower, the young man testified.

The defense has portrayed the Gilman community as exclusive and unwelcoming to gay men like Bendann.

Bendann said previously that he wished to skip parts of his trial. His refusal to leave the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore delayed jury selection by several hours last week. He has attended each day of the trial so far.