Alestas was charged in May 2024<\/a> after Bethlehem Area School District, where he worked as a school resource officer at East Hills Middle School, told Bethlehem police about incidents with the 14-year-old. The teenager met Alestas while she was a student there, and he gave her his phone number so they could talk outside school, according to authorities.<\/p>\nPolice 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. Additionally, he assaulted her in his car on two occasions.<\/p>\n
Alestas also had secret meetings with her away from school, and would drop her off near her home so she would not be seen, police said.<\/p>\n
Investigators who searched Alestas\u2019 cellphone found the video of an 11-year-old student taken at school, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
Alestas was fired shortly after charges were announced. He had been a school resource officer for six years, and also coached the school\u2019s co-ed soccer team.<\/p>\n
A delay in sentencing stemmed in part from Alestas\u2019 filing a motion in September to withdraw a guilty plea on the charges, after he pleaded guilty in April. Murray in November denied Alestas\u2019 motion<\/a> for withdrawal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Northampton County judge has sentenced a former Bethlehem police officer to 10-20 years in state prison for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,46,202,182,139,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-67917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67917","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=67917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67917\/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=67917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}