MOBILE COUNTY, Ala. — A former Faith Academy teacher and boys’ soccer coach was sentenced to 20 years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to two counts of a school employee engaging in a sex act with a student under the age of 19.
Jonathan Sauers entered the plea in Mobile County court on Sept. 14. Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood said Sauers received a 20-year sentence on each count, to run concurrently — meaning the two terms are served at the same time rather than one after the other.
The parents of the victim, now 20 years old, were in the courtroom to face Sauers as he learned his sentence.
A Plea That Was Signaled a Month Ago
Monday’s hearing closed out a case that had been moving toward resolution since late summer. South Alabama News reported on Aug. 18 that Sauers was expected to plead guilty in the case, after he signed a notice of intent to plead guilty in August.
A notice of intent to plead guilty is a procedural filing that tells the court and the prosecution a defendant intends to resolve the case without a trial. It is not the plea itself. The defendant still has to appear in open court, be advised of the rights he is giving up, acknowledge a factual basis for the charges, and have the plea accepted by a judge. That is what happened Monday.
Because the case resolved by plea, no trial was held and the victim was not called to testify. Blackwood pointed to that outcome directly when he explained why the state agreed to concurrent sentences rather than pressing for consecutive ones.
Blackwood: Consecutive Sentences Would Have Been 40 Years
Blackwood said that had Sauers not taken the plea agreement, the state would have sought to have the two sentences served back to back — a combined 40 years.
“We felt comfortable if this case had to go to trial — that if the defendant wanted to assert that right — and we were forced to make the victim testify, we would have asked for consecutive sentences,” Blackwood said.
The distinction between concurrent and consecutive sentences is one of the most consequential decisions in any multi-count case. When counts run concurrently, the clock on all of them starts together, and the effective term is the length of the longest single count. When they run consecutively, the second term does not begin until the first is completed. In this case, the difference between the two structures was 20 years.
Trading that difference for a resolution that spares a victim from testifying is a common calculation in prosecutions involving sex offenses, particularly where the person harmed was a minor at the time. Blackwood framed the outcome in those terms.
“The victim in this case is a very strong young woman who has come through a lot as a result of this. Hopefully this is going to provide some closure on the justice aspect of this as she continues to heal and move on with her life,” Blackwood said.
He also underscored what he described as the core of the case.
“Our children deserve to be protected when they’re at school. Not only was it inappropriate. It was criminal,” Blackwood said.
The Alabama Law Sauers Pleaded Guilty To
The charges come from Section 13A-6-81 of the Code of Alabama, part of a short article of the criminal code written specifically to address sexual offenses by school employees involving students.
The statute makes it a crime for a school employee to engage in sexual intercourse or sodomy with a student under the age of 19, regardless of the sex of either person. The law contains one clause that shapes nearly every prosecution brought under it: “Consent is not a defense to a charge under this section.”
That provision is the reason the statute exists as a separate offense. Alabama’s general age of consent is 16. Without this article of the criminal code, conduct between a school employee and a 16-, 17- or 18-year-old student would in many cases fall outside the reach of the state’s other sexual offense statutes. The Legislature closed that gap by making the employment relationship itself the element that matters, on the theory that a teacher, coach or counselor holds authority over a student that makes meaningful consent impossible.
The article defines “school employee” broadly. Section 13A-6-80 covers “a teacher, school administrator, student teacher, safety or resource officer, coach, adult volunteer in a position of authority or any other school employee who has contact with a student in his or her official capacity as a school employee.” Sauers held two of those roles.
A violation of Section 13A-6-81 is a Class B felony. Under Alabama’s sentencing statute, a Class B felony carries a range of two to 20 years in prison. The 20-year sentences imposed Monday sit at the top of that range on each count.
How the Case Came to Light
Sauers was arrested in March 2023 after a 16-year-old student did not return home when her parents expected her.
Mobile County Sheriff’s Office officials said at the time that her parents grew concerned after roughly an hour and a half passed and went looking for her. They located her vehicle but could not find her, and contacted the Semmes Police Department. A Semmes officer later located the student, department officials said at the time.
Sheriff’s office detectives were called to the family’s home, where the student told them she had been engaging in sexual acts with Sauers, and that it was not the first time.
South Alabama News is not identifying the victim and is limiting the detail published about her, consistent with standard practice in cases involving a person who was a minor at the time of a sexual offense.
Sex Offender Registration Follows the Conviction
The prison term is not the end of the legal consequences.
Alabama’s Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act, found in Title 15, Chapter 20A of the state code, lists the offenses that trigger registration. Section 15-20A-5 expressly includes a “school employee engaging in a sex act or deviant sexual intercourse with a student,” citing Sections 13A-6-81 and 13A-6-82.
For adults, the obligation is permanent. An adult sex offender in Alabama is subject to the chapter for life. In practice, that means registering with law enforcement in every county where the person lives, works, volunteers or attends school; verifying that information in person during the offender’s birth month and every three months after that; carrying a designated state-issued identification; reporting travel of three days or more; and living and working outside exclusion zones drawn around schools and child care facilities. Law enforcement agencies are required to provide community notification to nearby residents and to schools within a set radius.
Those requirements attach on release and continue for the rest of the offender’s life, independent of the sentence itself.
The Counselor’s Case and Alabama’s Mandatory Reporting Law
Sauers is not the only former Faith Academy employee to face a criminal sentence in connection with the case.
In June, former Faith Academy counselor Carrie Meredith was sentenced to six months in Mobile Metro Jail, with the term suspended in favor of six months of probation. Meredith was accused of failing to report the alleged sexual intercourse between Sauers and the student to the Alabama Department of Human Resources. As a guidance counselor, she was a mandatory reporter under Alabama law.
Alabama’s mandatory reporting statute, Section 26-14-3, requires a long list of professionals to report when they know or have reasonable cause to suspect that a child is being abused or neglected. The list includes doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, day care workers, members of the clergy in defined circumstances, and school teachers and officials. School counselors fall squarely inside it.
Several features of the law are worth understanding, because they are routinely misread:
- The trigger is suspicion, not certainty. A mandatory reporter does not need proof, and is not expected to investigate before reporting.
- The duty is personal. Telling a supervisor or filing an internal report does not satisfy it. The report goes to the Department of Human Resources or to a law enforcement agency.
- Reports are to be made immediately, and the statute provides immunity from civil or criminal liability for reporters acting in good faith.
- The penalty for knowingly failing to report is set out in Section 26-14-13. It is a misdemeanor punishable by not more than six months’ imprisonment or a fine of not more than $500.
That maximum is the context for Meredith’s sentence: six months is the top of the range the statute allows, and the jail term was suspended in favor of probation.
Why the Case Matters Beyond One Campus
Faith Academy is a private Christian school in Mobile County, and the reporting obligation that produced the second prosecution applies to private and public school employees alike. Alabama’s mandatory reporting law is written around professional roles, not around who signs the paycheck.
The two cases together trace the two distinct legal failures Alabama law addresses in situations like this one: the conduct itself, prosecuted under the school employee statute, and the silence around it, prosecuted under the reporting statute. The penalties are wildly different in scale — a Class B felony against a misdemeanor — but the reporting law exists precisely because the first offense is usually discovered only when an adult who suspects something acts on it.
Blackwood returned to that point in discussing the sentence, emphasizing the severity of the case and what he called the importance of keeping students safe.
Sauers’ conviction is now final by way of his guilty plea. He will serve his sentence in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections, and the registration requirements will follow him after release.