U.S. marshals took a Portage man who is a former priest into custody late last month on a warrant from New Orleans charging him with several felony counts of child sexual abuse and kidnapping, an official said.
Mark Francis Ford, 64, has been at the Porter County Jail since Sept. 25, confirmed Sgt. Ben McFalls, public information officer for the Porter County Sheriff’s Department. He did not know when the extradition proceedings for Ford might take place.
The New Orleans Police Department Special Victims Section issued a warrant for Ford’s arrest on Sept. 9, said Brian Fair, deputy U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Louisiana, in a phone interview. Marshals from the Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force assisted with Ford’s arrest.
The warrant charges, all felonies, include four counts of first-degree rape; two counts of second-degree kidnapping; two counts of sexual battery; and two counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile, Fair said, adding the sentence for first-degree rape is a maximum term of life in prison.
The alleged crimes took place from 2004 until 2014, Fair said.
The Guardian broke the story the day after Ford’s arrest.
Kristi Schubert, a New Orleans attorney representing the alleged victim for a planned civil suit, said her client, now 31, is on the autism spectrum and has a degenerative spinal condition that requires him to sometimes use a wheelchair. He has been legally deemed a minor and is under his mother’s guardianship.
The abuse, Schubert said in a phone interview, began around 2004, when Ford, then a Vincentian priest, ran a program for children with disabilities at St. Joseph Catholic Church in New Orleans. The alleged crimes continued until 2022 or 2023, Schubert said, because Ford continued to visit the family.
Schubert said she and the family found out about Ford’s arrest when it happened.
“For the last several years, my client has hardly had a single night where he slept through the night because he woke up with nightmares,” she said.
After Ford’s arrest, Schubert said her client slept for 12 hours, uninterrupted by the screams of his nightmares.
“He feels more safe than he has in a very long time,” she said, adding she would be “shocked” if Ford didn’t have additional victims. She hopes they come forward “to help ensure there’s a just outcome”
According to what appears to be Ford’s LinkedIn profile, he has worked full-time for Feeding America since 2021, most recently serving as the director of community engagement for Native/Tribal communities out of the Chicago office.
Representatives from Feeding America did not respond to an email request for comment on Ford’s arrest.
The LinkedIn profile reflects that he served as executive director of Indian Affairs for Louisiana’s governor from 2008 to 2010, and also served as assistant director in the governor’s Office of Disability Affairs from 2006 to 2008.
An archived profile of Ford on the American Indian Center website which has since been taken down notes that Ford, a Colorado native, is of American Indian descent and was a Roman Catholic priest for 16 years, serving for seven years on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona before he “was later assigned to two churches in New Orleans, Louisiana where he co-founded a ministry for children with disabilities and their families.”
It’s not immediately clear when or why Ford, who, according to the LinkedIn profile, received his master’s degree in divinity from St. Thomas Theological Seminary in 1990, left the priesthood.
The New Orleans Police Department would initiate Ford’s extradition through the courts there, said Fair, with the U.S. Marshal’s Office, and officers from that department would come to Porter County to take him into their custody if he waives extradition.
“I would think within two to three weeks he would be back here,” Fair said.
alavalley@chicagotribune.com
