An Alabama woman has resolved a misdemeanor case that authorities opened against her within days of speaking out about a Roman Catholic priest whom she accused of predatory behavior.
Heather Jones had publicly recounted that she was 17 when the priest, Robert “Bob” Sullivan, arranged to provide her financial support in exchange for companionship including sex – prompting him to resign from the clergy in November.
Jones agreed on 28 January to serve two years’ probation for what authorities deemed to be unauthorized practice of law, said an official with the Marshall county clerk’s office in Alabama.
Separately, Jones told the Guardian that the agreement left her feeling “free and clear” of a legal matter that she can’t help but surmise may have been pursued to undermine her credibility after coming forward against Sullivan.
“When I lay down at night, I am at peace with my actions and my intentions,” Jones said in a statement. “I hope that ‘they’ feel the same about theirs.”
The district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Jones, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Jones, 33, has said her story – which was first reported months earlier by the Guardian – illustrates what survivors of religious misconduct can endure before and after they step out of the proverbial shadows.
She first encountered Sullivan, 61, after growing up in foster care and being removed from her mother’s custody due to severe neglect. In a complaint that she would later file with church leaders, she wrote that she sought out employment as an exotic dancer at an establishment outside Birmingham, Alabama, after lacking reliable “adult support” during her formative years.
Jones says she was 17 when she met Sullivan at that establishment, which hired Jones despite her being under an applicable age limit. As Jones put it in her complaint, Sullivan was a regular patron, tipped her money during her shifts and eventually offered to “change” her life through “an ongoing relationship that would include financial support in exchange for private companionship”.
She alleged that Sullivan took her shopping, dining, drinking and to hotel rooms across Alabama to engage in sex beginning when she was 17 and over a span of several years. She also said he paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars to remain silent about it all, buttressing her complaint with financial and email records as well as a copy of a legal agreement.
At first, Jones said she didn’t grasp the exploitative nature of her acquaintance with Sullivan and went along with it out of desperation. She described struggling with depression, addiction and emotional instability during the arrangement – and said she ultimately decided to speak out against Sullivan because he had continued working closely with families and children as the pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows church in Homewood, Alabama.
Sullivan had also been appointed as one of the vicars general – a high-ranking administrative position – for the diocese of Birmingham.
Jones filed her complaint against Sullivan with the Birmingham diocese in August. She provided a copy of the complaint to the Guardian after he abruptly announced to his congregation that he was taking “personal leave” without specifying why.
Birmingham church officials forwarded Jones’s allegations to the entity at the Catholic church’s worldwide headquarters in the Vatican, which investigates clergy misconduct cases. Sullivan then asked Pope Leo XIV “to be dispensed from all the obligations of the priesthood”, and the pontiff granted the request on 22 November, church officials said.
Attempts to contact Sullivan have been unsuccessful.
Catholic priests promise to be sexually abstinent. Additionally, under policies that US Catholic bishops adopted in the early 2000s amid the worldwide church’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal, those younger than 18 are considered minors – and sexual contact with them is considered abusive.
There is no indication, however, that Sullivan ever drew scrutiny from Alabama law enforcement. The legal age of sexual consent in Alabama in 16, and it wasn’t until the spring of 2024 that the state made it a felony for clergy to engage in sexual activity with people younger than 19.
Meanwhile, eight days after the Guardian reported on her complaint against Sullivan, Jones was arrested on allegations that she had filed a legal motion on behalf of a man involved in a Marshall county court case despite not being a licensed attorney. Prosecutors later said the motion in question was signed under Jones’s name as an “advocate/law student” – and that she had engaged in the practice of law without authorization, as Alabama news outlet WHNT reported.
She agreed to serve probation on the morning that case against her was scheduled to be tried.
After, Jones said in a statement she had “met a network of survivors who have offered nothing but encouragement and support” in the wake of her speaking out about Sullivan.
“Thank you to those who supported me during this time, and I truly mean that,” Jones wrote. “And to those who doubted me, I thank you even more.”
