attempted to withdraw his guilty plea from April<\/a>, claiming he was innocent.<\/p>\nOn May 1, 2024, the Bethlehem City Police Department was notified of allegations concerning an inappropriate relationship between Officer Alestas and a girl student at East Hills Middle School, according to the release. At the time, Alestas was serving as a School Resource Officer (SRO) employed by the City of Bethlehem Police Department, officers say.<\/p>\n
Authorities say following the report, police were notified immediately, and Officer Alestas was placed on administrative leave.<\/p>\n
Alestas surrendered his cell phone to the police, and a thorough investigation revealed that he had engaged in an inappropriate ongoing relationship with the student.<\/p>\n
Additionally, police recovered evidence that Alestas recorded video up an 11-year-old girl’s skirt without her knowledge, court documents say.<\/p>\n
The DA Office says Alestas was charged with several offenses, including Statutory Sexual Assault, Institutional Sexual Assault, Aggravated Indecent Assault, Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse, Criminal Use of a Communications Facility, and Invasion of Privacy.<\/p>\n
Officials say Alestas will be registered as a sex offender on Megan’s Law for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – A former police officer once trusted to protect middle school students is now headed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[11228,153,155,154,2675,31,710,2892,2894,10044,27588,3427,740,742,1856,760,2897,2296,24467,10025,789,16043,1755,35870,2493,337,16045,16044,16046,109,3636],"class_list":["post-68007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-assault","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-child-abuse","tag-crime","tag-crimes","tag-criminal-justice","tag-criminal-law","tag-deviance-sociology","tag-invasion-of-privacy","tag-issues-in-ethics","tag-justice","tag-law","tag-law-enforcement","tag-middle-school","tag-misconduct","tag-police-officer","tag-probation","tag-school-resource-officer","tag-sentencing","tag-sex-and-the-law","tag-sex-crimes","tag-sex-offender","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-sexual-assault","tag-sexual-ethics","tag-sexual-misconduct","tag-sexual-violence","tag-violence","tag-violent-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68007","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=68007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}