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Adel Baladi, 46, originally insisted it was an accident and that the woman actually felt his cellphone.
But Superior Court Judge James J. Guida said he would allow testimony from two previous victims and was ready to begin a trial this morning.
Baladi, in turn, agreed to accept probation for a year in return for a guilty plea to a single count of criminal sexual contact.
One of the previous victims lives in California, the other in Pennsylvania, but both were willing to come to Hackensack to testify to the incidents, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Dion Findley said.
Both occurred at Baladi’s auto repair business in Garfield, he added.
Although the charges were downgraded and the cases eventually dismissed, Findley said: “These are pretty unique acts.
“In one case, he had a woman bend over to pick up a box, and then rammed her from behind,” he said. “In the second instance, he was helping a woman with a car and asked her to bend over and press the accelerator. When she did, he rammed her from behind.
“It’s unique behavior, almost like a signature.”
The Syrian-born Baladi, who has a wife and teenage child, at first refused to admit to doing anything sketchy.
“[W]e got close together,” he told Guida. “[I]t was my cellphone.”
But Findley cited a statement in which the victim said she could feel Baladi grind into her.
After she pushed him away, he said, he told her: “I’m sorry. You really turn me on.”
Guida insisted that Baladi explain his intentions at the time.
“You’re going to have to … tell me the truth,” the judge said.
After more attempts at couching the incident as an accident, Baladi admitted that he deliberately lured the woman into bending into her car to turn on her air conditioner and then grinding his groin area into her rear for sexual gratification.
Following his arrest last June, Baladi applied for Pre-trial Intervention, a special program that allows participants to clear their records if they stay out of trouble for a specified length of time.
He was denied, however.
“Based on the facts of this case, the offense can hardly be considered a victimless crime,” wrote senior probation officer Michael Killeen.
The victim also requested that Baladi be denied PTI “not only for my protection but for other women that he encounters in the future,” Killeen added.
“[W]e believe that early rehabilitative services and the minimal supervision offered by the PTI Program would not serve the interests of the victim / State of New Jersey,” he wrote.
Guida scheduled sentencing for Aug. 27.
STORY / PHOTO: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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