Catholic "Father" Robert Sullivan made a vow of chastity after he "heard the call" to vocation and was ordained. But he hired 17-year old Heather Jones to be his paid concubine for the next 16 years, which makes him an even greater sinner than his fellow protestant reverends, pastors and other "shepherds" who can marry but still find enough excess libido to screw around with parishioners, prostitutes and such behind their spouses' backs.
Alabama's age of consent is 16, not 18. Alabama law also admits that sex between two people with a power imbalance between them (e.g. a priest and his parishioner, or a teacher and his/her student) is consensual.
We hear that shepherds in mountaineous countries fall in love with their ewes but there is no money involved. It's not love when money is involved, so shepherd Robert Sullivan engaged Heather Jones when she was only 17 years old to be his "private companion", a business arrangement that lasted 16 years until the "employed companion" changed her mind, as often happens with women who regret their own misadventures in the realm of the forbidden.
I am always impressed by the pedantic lies with which religious institutions explain themselves when caught in fornication scandals. I remember when, as a student at a religious-run school, a night supervisor priest was caught diddling with one of his boarder students in the showers. The news broke out the next day and everyone knew what had happened. But the principal announced the departure of the fornicating priest by explaining that "the priest had to leave the country to be with his dying mother". Needless to say, but the offending priest never returned to the school after "burying his mother"; the church must have appointed him to another school where he probably continued plying his shepherding trade in shower stalls late at night.
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Alabama priest leaves clergy after woman alleges ‘private companionship’ beginning when she was 17
Ramon Antonio Vargas
Fri, November 28, 2025
Robert Sullivan told his congregation he was taking a leave of absence on 3 August 2025.Photograph: Youtube
A longtime Roman Catholic priest in Alabama has voluntarily left the clergy after a woman alleged to his superiors that he provided her financial support in exchange for “private companionship” including sex beginning when she was 17.
Robert Sullivan’s self-imposed removal from the priesthood – known as laicization – was announced Wednesday, the day before the US holiday of Thanksgiving, in a public statement from Birmingham, Alabama, by Bishop Steven Raica.
The woman who accused Sullivan, Heather Jones, filed her allegations in a formal written statement to the Birmingham diocese that she then shared exclusively with the Guardian in August. Jones, now 33, also maintained that Sullivan had paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars to remain silent about their arrangement, backing up her claim with financial and email records, along with a copy of a legal agreement.
Raica’s letter said a subsequent church investigation into “the significant payments alleged to have been made by then-father Sullivan … found no link between the allegations and any diocesan, parish or school funds”.
“These four months since the allegations surfaced have been challenging in the life of our local church,” Raica’s letter added. “I am grateful for the patience and resilience of all who have been affected directly or indirectly by this matter.”
Members of the priesthood from which Sullivan, 61, chose to resign promise to be abstinent and teach that sex out of wedlock is sinful. Furthermore, people younger than 18 are classified as minors –and sexual contact with them considered to be abusive – under policies which US Catholic bishops adopted in the early 2000s amid the worldwide church’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal.
However, there is no indication Sullivan has drawn scrutiny from lay authorities. The legal age of sexual consent in Alabama is 16. And law enforcement investigators have in some cases been reluctant to act in cases of religious clergy accused of having improper sexual contact with teens who had reached the legal age of consent.
Alabama also is not among the US states with laws that say a power imbalance makes it impossible for there to be consensual sex between clergy and legal adults who are under the clerics’ spiritual guidance.
In her statement to Sullivan’s superiors as well as in an interview with the Guardian, Jones recounted growing up in foster care after being removed from her mother’s custody “due to severe neglect”. She wrote that she lacked reliable “adult support” during her formative years and therefore tried to make ends meet by working as a dancer at an “adult establishment” outside Birmingham.
Jones said she was 17 when she met Sullivan at that establishment, where she managed to land a job despite being under an applicable age limit. Sullivan was a regular patron, made it a point to tip her during her shifts and soon offered to “help change [her] life” if she called him on a phone number he slipped her, she wrote.
Sullivan then proposed “to form an ongoing relationship that would include financial support in exchange for private companionship”, Jones wrote. Jones said Sullivan went on to take her shopping, dining, drinking, and to hotel rooms in at least six different Alabama cities in part to engage in sex – beginning when she was 17 and over the course of several years.
He was said to have initially presented himself as a medical doctor, though Jones later learned he was a priest.
“At the time, I was a minor, with no experience navigating adult relationships, and no understanding of how power and influence could be used to manipulate someone vulnerable,” Jones wrote in her complaint. “I was hesitant but ultimately agreed due to his persistence and the desperate state I was in.”
Jones said she grappled with depression, addiction and emotional instability during her arrangement with Sullivan. She said she eventually spoke out against him because Sullivan had continued working closely with families and their children as the otherwise popular pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows church in Homewood, Alabama, leaving her worried “others may be vulnerable to the same type of manipulation and exploitation” that she described enduring.
Additionally, in 2020, Raica had appointed Sullivan to serve as one of the Birmingham diocese’s vicars general, meaning he held a high-ranking administrative position.
Sullivan told congregants at Our Lady of Sorrows’ 3 August mass he was taking “personal leave”. He did not provide a reason, but Jones by then had filed her complaint against him with the diocese.
Raica issued a letter to his diocese’s congregants informing them of the allegations against Sullivan and the reason for his leave on 13 August, the same day that the Guardian reported Jones’s story. That letter also said the diocese had forwarded Jones’s allegations to the Vatican entity which investigates cases of clergy misconduct.
Sullivan later asked Pope Leo XIV to “be dispensed from all the obligations” of the priesthood, Wednesday’s statement from Raica said. The pontiff granted the request on Monday, Raica’s missive said.
Jones did not immediately comment on Sullivan’s laicization.
Sullivan was ordained a priest in 1993, according to a previous Our Lady of Sorrows social media post.
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