A Catholic priest who left clergy life for positions in the administrations of two former Louisiana governors was arrested on charges of raping and kidnapping a young and vulnerable parishioner in New Orleans two decades ago.
Mark Francis Ford, 64, was cuffed in Indiana on Thursday for charges stemming from allegations at a Roman Catholic church in New Orleans where he used to serve.
An unidentified man, now 31, alleged that Ford began abusing him in 2004, when he was just 10 years old, after meeting the Vincentian priest through a program he ran for children with disabilities.
The exact circumstances of the abuse were not clear, but the man — who is under his mother’s permanent tutorship — said it continued until around 2022 or 2023, long after the clergyman had left the priesthood for greener pastures in government.
The alleged victim suffers from a degenerative spinal cord condition that occasionally has him relying on a wheelchair to get around. He is also on the autism spectrum and is legally determined to be a minor regardless of his age, his attorney Kristi Schubert told The Guardian.
He had only recently revealed the abuse accusations.
Schubert said her client underwent multiple forensic interviews before police obtained an arrest warrant for Ford.
Because the former priest had relocated out of state, his arrest required collaboration across multiple departments that are still working in tandem to extradite Ford to New Orleans.
During his staggering 16 years in the Catholic priesthood, Ford specifically worked with indigenous reservations in Arizona and, later, two churches in New Orleans, according to his online biography published by the American Indian Center.
Ford started as the Louisiana state government’s assistant director of disability affairs under then-governor Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, in 2006, according to his LinkedIn. In the role, he specifically helped people with disabilities access the scarce resources available in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
In 2008, he was appointed to direct Louisiana’s office of Indian affairs under Blanco’s Republican successor, Bobby Jindal. Similar to his role under Blanco, Ford was tasked with aiding the state’s indigenous tribes as they recovered from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, according to his LinkedIn.
Most recently, Ford worked as the director of community engagement for native/tribal communities at the non-profit Feeding America, according to his LinkedIn. The Post reached out to Feeding America for comment.
Ford was charged with first-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping, sexual battery and indecent behavior with a juvenile. He could face life in prison if convicted on the rape charge alone. The others would only stack on extra years to an already-steep sentence.
Over the past few years, the Catholic church in New Orleans was rocked by a bankrupt-inducing scandal after a sexual abuse probe found that the city’s archdiocese may have worked to shield a slew of predators in its ranks.
The New Orleans archdiocese filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020, which would limit its financial liability in mounting claims of clergy abuse, primarily regarding children, over multiple decades.
As the controversy spiraled, the city’s archdiocese agreed to pay a staggering $230 million to settle with abuse survivors. The settlement has yet to be approved by the survivors involved.
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