For more than two years after being charged with raping a 22-year-old employee at a club he owned in Derby, Dardian “Danny” Celaj wasn’t interested in a plea deal.
That changed Tuesday after he listened to about 80 minutes of his accuser’s tearful, graphic testimony during a trial at Superior Court in Milford.
Just as the woman finished describing being manhandled and sexually assaulted by Celaj in the early morning hours of March 2, 2012, he whispered to his lawyer, Donald Cretella, who promptly asked Judge Denise Markle to call a recess.
Minutes later, Celaj, 36, pleaded guilty in the case — and will face between two and eight years behind bars when sentenced in July.
After the plea, State’s Attorney Kevin Lawlor said he hopes federal officials will “do what they should have done a long time ago” and initiate deportation proceedings against Celaj, an Albanian native already on federal probation in connection with a 2011 robbery-extortion case tied to a New York City organized crime family.
Background
Derby police arrested Celaj March 3, 2012, the day after the incident in Derby, charging him with first-degree sexual assault and third-degree assault.
But the specific allegations against Celaj remained a secret throughout the course of his 19 appearances in court for the case. The warrant charging him was sealed from public view.
Last week he opted to take the case to trial. It was not a jury trial; Judge Denise Markle would render a verdict after hearing evidence. Tuesday was the first day of testimony.
Lawlor had called two witnesses in the trial — Derby Police Officer Michael Baldo and the victim — before Celaj opted to take a plea deal.
Baldo testified briefly about interviewing the victim in the case, a then-22-year-old woman who at the time of the assault had been tending bar for about a week at an Albanian social club Celaj owned known as Club Europa.
The club opened in late 2009 at 142 – 144 Main St., a building owned by former Derby Alderman Sam Rizzitelli.
‘Take It Like A Good Girl’
The victim herself then took the stand.
She said in the brief time she worked at the club, Celaj was a nice boss, but that she was wary of him after being told he had ties to Italian and Albanian organized crime.
She went on to describe the night of March 1, 2012.
The club was to be closed the next day, she testified.
About 15 to 20 regulars gathered there for one last night.
The mood was festive. Customers drank and danced to Albanian music — at one point Celaj’s girlfriend poured the victim a shot and then taught her some dance steps.
Later a male customer tried to get her to dance with him. She didn’t want to. Celaj helped her fend off the man’s attention, she testified, but then told her he wanted to have sex with her himself.
She tried to play it off.
“I laughed about it,” she said. “He was drunk.”
But by the time the bar emptied out in the early morning hours of March 2, 2012, Celaj and his girlfriend had gotten into a spat and left in separate cars.
The victim stayed behind to clean up when she heard a car pull up behind the building.
It was Celaj’s.
He walked into the building and began kissing her.
Then he led her to a booth bar and started taking her clothes off.
“I told him ‘I don’t know about this. I don’t know if I can do this,’” she testified to telling him at the time.
“I was nervous,” she said. “I didn’t really know what to do.”
Lawlor asked why.
“He’s the kind of person you don’t say no to,” the woman replied, alluding to Celaj’s reputed mob ties.
Celaj then grabbed a fistful of her hair and forcibly had sex with her, she testified, crying on the stand and hesitating when Lawlor asked her to describe graphic details.
She said she told Celaj to stop several times during the ordeal.
“He told me to take it like a good girl,” she testified at one point. “Like a whore.”
Plea, Reaction
Minutes after the woman described the ordeal, Celaj pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine to a single count of first-degree sexual assault before Judge Frank Iannotti.
Under Alford, a defendant does not admit all of the allegations he or she is charged with, but concedes that a conviction is likely if the case went to trial.
A plea deal worked out between Lawlor and Cretella calls for Celaj to face up to eight years in prison at his sentencing, scheduled for July 1.
In the meantime, Judge Iannotti ordered Celaj, who posted a $250,000 bond in the case after his arrest and told the judge he’s now living in Shelton, to be confined to his home and monitored electronically from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. on weeknights and 24 hours a day on weekends.
Outside the courthouse Cretella said hearing the woman on the stand convinced Celaj to take a plea deal.
“Her testimony was the reason he changed his plea,” Cretella said, calling it a “difficult case.”
Lawlor said Celaj’s victim supported the plea deal. He said she is a hero for helping to get Celaj off the streets.
“At the end of the day this conviction is a credit to a very brave woman who stuck with this case for two years,” he said. “She was brave (the night she was assaulted) and she’s been brave ever since.”
The prosecutor also thanked the Milford Rape Crisis Center for aiding the woman after the assault.
And he also wondered why Celaj hadn’t been deported after he pleaded guilty in July 2011 to six federal robbery and extortion charges connected to New York’s Genovese crime family.
Celaj received a sentence of time served and three years of probation in that case. In a court filing, Lawlor said Celaj had agreed to cooperate with federal authorities, after which he was “relocated to Derby.”
“He’s certainly more than eligible [to be deported] now with seven violent felonies on his record,” the prosecutor said. “It makes you wonder why he hasn’t been already.”
Though the sexual assault case was resolved Tuesday, Celaj still faces legal problems.
On Jan. 30 he was arrested by Seymour police on charges of second-degree burglary, breach of peace and criminal mischief.
According to court documents, Celaj is accused of pushing in the door of his girlfriend’s residence on Balance Rock Road, after which he became “verbally violent.”
The girlfriend left the residence out of fear, after which Celaj is accused of “destroying items throughout the apartment.”
Celaj is due at Superior Court in Derby Thursday, April 24 in that case.
