According to the recent Ramon Antonio Vargas’ article in The Guardian, “Former priest who served under two Louisiana governors arrested for allegedly raping disabled child”: Mark Francis Ford was arrested last Thursday in Indiana and was charged with rape, battery, kidnapping, and indecent behavior with a juvenile. The allegations stem from his former career as a Catholic priest in New Orleans where he ministered disabled children. Mr. Ford will be extradited to New Orleans to face these charges.
“[C]ivil attorney Kristi Schubert is representing Ford’s accuser, and she alleged her client met him while participating in a program for children with disabilities that was run by Ford, then a Vincentian priest.”
“Schubert’s client alleges that Ford began abusing him when was about 10, in 2004. She said her client, now 31, has a degenerative spinal cord condition which occasionally requires him to get around in a wheelchair. He is also on the autism spectrum, has been legally determined to be a minor despite reaching the age of majority and is under his mother’s continuing, permanent tutorship, Schubert said.”
“He [Ford] is among at least five men who have worked as Catholic clergymen in New Orleans to have been arrested in connection with allegations of child sexual abuse after the city’s archdiocese filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020. The church’s bankruptcy filing was meant to limit its financial liability with respect to hundreds of claims of clergy abuse, mostly victimizing children, over the course of decades.”
“Three of those men have pleaded guilty, with two since dying and one serving prison time as of Friday. A fourth was awaiting trial.”
