Lawyer says former priest accused of raping disabled child should now be placed on list of clergy abusers | Clergy Abuse in New Orleans

An Indiana man accused of molesting a disabled child while working as a Catholic priest in New Orleans for several years starting in 2004 should be listed as having been credibly accused of clergy abuse by the various institutions he served, says the director of a church accountability organization.

Mark Francis Ford, who was once a member of the religious order known colloquially as the Vincentians, served in the Archdiocese of New Orleans as well as the dioceses of Dallas and Gallup, New Mexico, after his ordination in 1992. He is accused of raping a boy he met through a program he helped start in New Orleans called God’s Special Children — which serves disabled youth — before and after the Vincentians. Suppose Ford successfully asked the Vatican to secularize him, or remove him from the priesthood, in 2007.

News of Ford’s arrest in September in Indiana, where he worked for a hunger-relief nonprofit, based on a warrant obtained by New Orleans police, stirred the media and the public. BishopAccountability.org Director Terry McKiernan to examine his career history.

McKernan found that Ford, 64, was not listed among active clergy members in the 1994, 1999, 2002 and 2003 editions of the Official Catholic Directory (OCD) — with such disappearances generally linked to “problems in the ministry that were not managed in a transparent manner, and/or periods during which the priest was sent to a treatment center.”

The oldest of these ministry interruptions was only explained in the media. The Dallas Morning News reported in 1997 that Ford had previously entered a program in Albuquerque, New Mexico, run by Paraclete ministers. The reason given was a money management problem, although this particular program is better known for treating a range of other problems, from drug abuse to pedophilia.

McKernan said his organization “questions that this is the real reason Ford was with the Paraclete Ministers, whose mission in the early 1990s mostly involved priests who abused children.”

“Until documents proving otherwise are unsealed, we can only conclude that the problems revealed in Ford’s recent arrest and in the charges against him are also reflected in … his previous OCD disappearances,” McKiernan said.

Therefore, based on the finding of probable cause connected to the warrant that led to Ford’s arrest, McKernan said it would be a “prudent action” to add Ford to the lists of credibly accused clergy previously released by the Vincentians as well as the three dioceses where he worked.

The lists were among the lists released by more than 200 other US dioceses and branches of a religious order as a gesture of transparency amid the decades-long scandal of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church around the world. They “inform the public and, in particular…notify survivors that other survivors may have made credible allegations.”

“When the bishop or superior confirms the credibility of a claim, survivors find validation and solace, and when the priest is still alive, children are protected,” McKiernan said. “We call on the three dioceses and his religious order to add Ford to their lists and to provide a full report on his whereabouts and activities, especially during the years when OCD was not revealing that information.”

A statement from a spokesman for the US branch of the Vincentians, to which Ford belongs, said individuals were included in their organization’s list “when the accusation is deemed credible.”

A spokesman for the Diocese of Gallup, whose boundaries include part of Arizona, said it was working on a statement and would provide it to the Guardian once it was ready. Neither the Archdiocese of Dallas nor the Archdiocese of New Orleans — which and its insurance companies were preparing to pay at least $230 million to settle hundreds of clergy sex abuse claims — responded to requests for comment.

God’s special children

The most complete picture of Ford’s whereabouts during his time as a priest is largely contained in the working history compiled by McKernan and provided to The Guardian – as well as contemporary news clippings.

Citing information from OCD, Ford was first assigned to Holy Trinity Church of the Dallas Diocese, which was adjacent to a school with approximately 170 students. The school also counted more than 420 students enrolled in Christian education and other religious programs.

He disappeared from OCD in 1994 before spending 1995-1998 and 2000-2001 in the Gallup Diocese. Ford spent the first of those extensions dedicated to both Immaculate Heart of Mary and St. Jude churches in the Arizona communities of Page and Tuba City. After his 1999 disappearance from OCD, he was assigned solely to Page Church, which reported between 110 and 135 students in catechism and other religious programs during his two terms there.

Ford subsequently disappeared from OCD in 2002 and 2003 before resurfacing in New Orleans from 2004 to 2006 at St. John the Baptist and St. Joseph churches, respectively in the Central City and Tullan-Gravier neighborhoods in that community.

He was also listed at St. Stephen’s Church in New Orleans’ Touro neighborhood in 2005 and 2006 before becoming a voluntary layman. Another Vincentian priest assigned to St. Stephen at that time, the late James Steinbach, would later land credible accusers in the order existing.

Media articles, including some quotes from Ford, and several online biographical files add to that picture. A 1997 Introductory account The Dallas Morning News quoted him as saying he was part Navajo, Chiricahua Apache and Zuni — while also admitting he spent seven months in a treatment center for Paraclete servants in Albuquerque. Ford claimed he needed to go there because he was a “compulsive spender, indebted, and mismanaging money” who drained the financial accounts of both the Tuba City and Page churches, as the Gallup Independent recently reported.

Asked whether she would confirm or deny whether Ford’s spending was the only reason he went to Paraclete Butler, a Vincentian family spokesman said the matter did not comment on personnel matters.

Ford later claimed in an online biography linked to a role at the American Indian Center that he had served on Navajo and Hopi reservations while in Arizona.

Anyway, once Ford arrived in New Orleans, he made headlines for participating in the launch of “God’s Special Children” at St. Joseph’s along with Jay Zinney, a judge, in the city’s federal courthouse.

A 2005 article in the local Times-Picayune newspaper recounted how Zinni met Ford while attending Mass at St. John the Baptist Church. “In talking to Ford about his son, … who suffers from autism as well as a rare chromosomal abnormality, Zinni said there was no Mass that his wife and their two other children … felt they could attend with him.” [the son] “Without disturbing other worshippers,” the post wrote.

Ford reportedly told the newspaper at the time that he “understands the frustration felt by the Zinni family, which is often shared by other parents with children with disabilities.” After meeting Ibn Zaini, Ford discovered “the calling to serve people like them [him]”.

“I realized that children with disabilities were wonderful gifts to the church,” Ford told the Times-Picayune. He then celebrated the first Service of God’s Distinguished Children in the fall of 2004.

Over the years, Zinney has gained a reputation as one of the most devout Catholics in Louisiana’s most famous city. At one point, he said publicly that it was his idea for New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond to turn to high-ranking executives of the city’s professional soccer team, the Saints, for help with media messaging related to the local clergy abuse scandal. He also ruled in favor of a Catholic religious order pushing to overturn a 2021 Louisiana law that enables survivors of clerical abuse to seek damages for decades-old child molestation. However, the state Supreme Court later upheld the law, in effect overturning Zinni’s ruling.

The God’s Special Children website now lists Zinni as the program’s founder, although a letter attributed to him as of Sunday expressed gratitude for Ford’s support. When asked if he would discuss Ford, Zinni declined, saying, “I haven’t seen him for many years.”

Arrested in Indiana

Ford’s American Indian Center biography says he became the Louisiana state government’s assistant director for disability affairs in 2006, a year after federal levees failed during Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans.

He attributed this to his appointment to the position by then-Governor Kathleen Blanco, saying the Democratic administration tasked him with helping people with disabilities access resources and services after Hurricane Katrina.

Ford’s biography says Blanco’s Republican successor, Bobby Jindal, then appointed him to run the Louisiana Bureau of Indian Affairs, where his job was to assist efforts by the state’s indigenous tribes to recover from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008.

He then reportedly joined US hunger relief non-profit Feeding America in 2021, with positions in Phoenix and Chicago. The Portage, Indiana, resident is listed as a member of the Indiana American Center’s board of directors, as noted by the Gallup Independent.

In November, a man who described meeting him when he was 10 years old in 2004 through the organization God’s Special Children reported to New Orleans police that he had been sexually harassed by Ford. The defendant – who is now 31 and lives with a degenerative spinal cord condition that sometimes requires mobility in a wheelchair – underwent a series of forensic interviews before police subsequently obtained an arrest warrant for Ford, said his lawyer, Christy Schubert.

Schubert also said her client’s family considered Ford a close friend at one point. Schubert said the accused is on the autism spectrum and has been legally identified as a minor despite having reached the age of majority, leaving him under the permanent guardianship of his mother for life.

Records obtained by The Guardian show that New Orleans police obtained permission from a local judge to arrest Ford on September 9 on charges of first-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping, sexual battery and indecent conduct with a juvenile. The documents give the dates of the crimes from November 1, 2004, to December 31, 2014, and Ford will be subject to a mandatory life sentence if he is ultimately convicted as a defendant.

Authorities then arrested Ford in Portage on September 25, and held him without bail pending his transfer to New Orleans. Ford waived his right to challenge the transfer at a court hearing on October 1, but remained in a Portage area jail as of Sunday.

Schubert and her client’s family largely declined to comment after Ford’s arrest, saying they did not want to interfere in the criminal case against him. But she said her client suffered for years from nightmares and episodes of waking up screaming.

His first night of uninterrupted sleep in recent memory came right after he learned that Ford had been taken into custody by authorities with the intention of prosecuting him, according to Schubert.