A man accused of molesting a disabled boy he met while working as a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans has been indicted on child rape charges, according to authorities.
A grand jury sitting in New Orleans state criminal court on Thursday handed down a nine-count indictment against Mark Francis Ford, nearly five months after authorities arrested him and held him without bail. The document accuses Ford, 64, of aggravated rape of a child; rape of a person suffering from a physical disability preventing resistance; two counts of molestation of a juvenile; another count of disorderly conduct with a minor; and kidnapping.
Ford is just the latest figure to come under scrutiny by authorities in the long-running priest molestation scandal inside the New Orleans Catholic church. Prosecutors allege he committed the offenses cited in the indictment between 2006 and 2008, victimizing a boy between the ages of 12 and 14.
He faces mandatory life imprisonment if convicted as charged in the indictment, where the New Orleans district attorney’s office, Jason Williams, filed formal charges against Ford in connection with his earlier arrest.
Ford’s attorney, Ralph Whalen, did not immediately comment Thursday.
Court records generated by Ford’s arrest say he positioned himself as a mentor to the victim in the case as the boy grieved for the two families who died. Ford then allegedly took advantage of that proximity to abuse the boy, whom he met through a church program for disabled youth.
The name of that program is God’s Special Children, and it was founded by Ford.
As police said in a sworn statement filed in court, the boy was grieving the death of his grandmother and father when Ford – who was a Catholic priest from 1992 to 2007 – became close to him, visiting him at home to play video games with him and giving him guitar lessons.
Then, police allege, Ford began showing pornography to the boy, who is on the autism spectrum and has a degenerative spinal condition, which sometimes requires him to use a wheelchair. Ford allegedly ignored the child’s pleas when the child expressed discomfort with the explicit content, eventually sexually assaulted the child multiple times and told her that her family would not believe her if she reported the abuse.
Legally ruled a minor despite the age of majority, the victim went to police in November 2024, court documents said. He underwent two forensic interviews, and police obtained an arrest warrant for Ford in early September.
Authorities arrested Ford in Portage, Indiana, where he lived, later that month. He was transferred to a New Orleans jail in October and ordered held there without bail pending the outcome of the case.
Williams’ office previously said the case against Ford was “very serious and troubling”.
“He is accused of using his position to commit violent and despicable acts against a child with a disability,” an earlier statement from Williams’ office said. “These allegations represent an unacceptable breach of trust and a level of vulnerability that should not be exploited.”
Ford is one of several men who worked as Catholic clergy in New Orleans arrested by authorities in connection with allegations of child sexual abuse before and after the city’s archdiocese filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020.
The archdiocese and its insurers in early December agreed to pay $305m collectively to settle abuse survivors whose claims are entangled in the bankruptcy case. Almost a year to the day before that deal, retired New Orleans Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker pleaded guilty to decades-long rape and kidnapping charges and received a mandatory life sentence. He died in prison at the age of 93 shortly afterwards.
Ford belonged to the Catholic religious order known as the Vincentians, and he was assigned to various churches within the archdiocese of New Orleans as well as the dioceses of Dallas and Gallup, New Mexico, during his clerical career. He helped found the Special Children of God while at St Joseph’s church in New Orleans, which had been run by the Vincentians since 1858.
Vincentians say Ford eventually successfully asked the Vatican to remove him from the Catholic priesthood. An online profile of Ford says he worked for Louisiana government starting in 2006 as assistant director of disability affairs, and later, in a different role, helping the efforts of Native tribes in the state to recover from hurricanes.
Recently, Ford reportedly joined the US hunger relief non-profit Feeding America with positions in Phoenix and Chicago. And he is listed as a board member of the American Indian Center in Chicago.
The church watcher group BishopAccountability.org previously stated that the 1994, 1999, 2002 and 2003 editions of the Official Catholic Directory failed to list Ford among active members of the clergy. Such absences can often signal “problems in the ministry that are not managed in a transparent way, and/or times where the priest is sent to a treatment center”, the group said.
However, as the website says, the ministry’s disruptions are the first to be explained to the public. The Dallas Morning News reported in 1997 that Ford entered a program in New Mexico to be treated for money management problems while working at two churches in Arizona for the Gallup diocese.