A Northampton County judge on Friday denied a former Bethlehem police officer\u2019s attempt to withdraw his guilty plea on charges alleging he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl.<\/p>\n
Costas Alestas, 44, of Palmer Township, filed a motion in September<\/a> to withdraw his plea on charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with someone younger than 16 and invasion of privacy, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in April<\/a>, and was going to be sentenced in late September.<\/p>\n District Attorney Stephen Barrata said in a news release that Judge Samuel Murray denied the motion, and the plea still stands. Alestas now awaits sentencing, which has not been scheduled, according to court records.<\/p>\n Alestas was charged in May 2024 after the Bethlehem Area School District, where he worked as a school resource officer at East Hills Middle School, told the department about the incidents with the girl. The girl, 14, met Alestas while she was a student there, and he gave her his phone number so they could talk outside of school, according to authorities.<\/p>\n Police said the two met in his office, where he touched her. During a school event, they met in a concealed area and he sexually assaulted her while in full uniform.\u00a0Additionally, he assaulted her in his car on two occasions.<\/p>\n Alestas had secret meetings with her outside of school, and would drop her off near her home so she would not be seen, police said.<\/p>\n Investigators also found an \u201cupskirt\u201d video of an 11-year-old at the school while searching his phone, according to court documents, which state he strategically turned his phone to record her skirt.<\/p>\n Alestas was fired shortly after charges were announced last year. He was a school resource officer for six years, and also coached the school\u2019s co-ed soccer team.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Northampton County judge on Friday denied a former Bethlehem police officer\u2019s attempt to withdraw his guilty plea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,1391,46,202,182,139,434,28],"class_list":["post-30345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area","tag-courts","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}