A Roman Catholic priest today vowed to remain at the heart of his parish despite a court freeing a woman who developed an obsessive crush on him.

Father Kenneth Patrick Hawley said today he would not abandon his congregation at St Brendan's Church in Ravenscliffe - even though obsessive Gail Henderson lives just yards away from his own church home.

Speaking from his presbytery home, Fr Hawley assured parishioners he would not abandon them despite his own pain and suffering, but he was too upset about the case to comment further.

Yesterday Bradford magistrates were told that 29-year-old Henderson became fixated with the priest soon after he took up his post at St Brendan's and subjected him to repeated phone calls and visits over a three-month period between August and November last year.

Henderson, who suffers from psychiatric problems, lives close to the church and initially asked the priest for money and food because she was hungry.

Prosecutor Michael Wrigglesworth said the priest felt a sense of duty and gave her food parcels to begin with, but her fixation with the priest became intense.

"It then became clear to the priest that her interest was perhaps more than having a chat or finding food - she seems to really have formed a fixation with him," said Mr Wrigglesworth.

"She began making inappropriate comments and suggestions to him, which he refused. Father Hawley certainly formed the view that she had developed a crush on him."

The court heard how the Catholic priest had been left shattered by the whole situation. Henderson would sit in church listening to sermons and pester him at his home asking to borrow milk and sugar.

Mr Wrigglesworth described how on one visit Henderson offered Fr Hawley sexual favours and when the horrified priest refused she offered him a teenage boy, who was with her, for sex.

Eventually the exasperated priest began taping and logging Henderson's phone calls and on one day recorded 11 calls in the space of an hour.

"These repeated calls could consist of anything from her singing down the telephone to being sexually suggestive towards him," said Mr Wrigglesworth.

The priest also described incidents of Henderson watching him wash-up through his kitchen window and hiding behind a bush in the grounds of the church.

After Henderson was spoken to by police in November last year she left phone messages saying she was sorry and sent him a letter in which she said she loved him and would do anything for him.

In a statement to police, Fr Hawley described himself as being "at the end of his tether" and finding the whole situation "unnerving".

Henderson, of Rimswel Holt, Ravenscliffe, eventually pleaded guilty last month to a charge of harassment, but a warrant had to be issued just over a week ago when she failed to attend court for sentence.

She was yesterday given a three-month prison, suspended for a year, and made the subject of a restraining order to stay away from Fr Hawley and the church grounds until further notice.

Passing sentence bench chairwoman, Mary Smith, told Henderson: "In our view you deliberately embarked upon a course of conduct. You deliberately and persistently contacted Fr Hawley in such a way as to harass him.

"We note that some of the contacts have been particularly distressing and distasteful to Fr Hawley - when he was offered sexual services and most particularly when you offered another person for the same purposes."

She added: "He found the whole experience physically and emotionally exhausting."

Mrs Smith said they had decided to suspend the prison sentence after hearing that Henderson was now undergoing a course of medical treatment with the help of a community psychiatric nurse.

Henderson's solicitor, Tariq Hussain, stressed that his client had not been in contact with Fr Hawley since about May this year despite living in the same area.

He suggested that her family background and psychiatric problems had resulted in her thinking that Fr Hawley's "helping hand" was more than it was.

"She was trying to repay the help that she got from in her own way, which was clearly wrong," he said.

"She wanted to be part of his life and was clearly wrong and misguided in everything that she did."

She was not at home for comment today.