A former school resource officer with the Bethlehem Police Department cannot withdraw his guilty plea in a sex crimes investigation from last year.
Northampton County Common Pleas Court Judge Samuel P. Murray ruled last week on Costas Alestas’s request to withdraw his plea.
District Attorney Stephen Baratta announced the ruling Monday, saying Alestas’s guilty pleas and convictions will stand.
Murray’s ruling Friday, Nov. 7 sets up Alestas to be sentenced.
Alestas’s attorney did not immediately return a call for comment Monday.
Bethlehem police in May 2024 investigated allegations that Alestas had committed sexual offenses while assigned to East Hills Middle School.
“A thorough police investigation confirmed that Alestas committed sexual offenses with that minor female victim,” Baratta’s office stated in a news release Monday. “Police also recovered evidence confirming that Alestas secretly recorded an ‘upskirt’ video of another minor female victim.”
Alestas on April 23 pleaded guilty to charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse against a person less than 16 years old, a first-degree felony, in addition to misdemeanor invasion of privacy.
Prosecutors withdrew four additional counts against Alestas: statutory sexual assault, school-intercourse/sexual contact with student, aggravated indecent assault and criminal use of communication facility.
In pleading guilty in April, Alestas had admitted to sexually assaulting the girl in the boys’ locker room during a school dance. He admitted to repeated inappropriate communications with the girl between March and May 2024, admitted he sexually assaulted her in his car at the William Penn Highway Park and Ride in Bethlehem Township and admitted he sexually assaulted her in his car at Green Pond Country Club in Bethlehem Township.
He also admitted that he took the upskirt video of a different girl at a different time in the school.
In a hearing before Murray in September on the plea-withdrawal request, Alestas insisted he did not commit the crimes. He said he took the plea deal only for the promise of a 10-year sentence, rather than the 30-year sentence he risked by facing trial.
“I want to see my kids and not rot in prison. That’s the only reason I took that option,” the 44-year-old Palmer Township resident told the judge.
Baratta said his office put up “firm opposition” to Alestas request to withdraw the plea, which Murray “flatly denied.”
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