An actor who became the first in Scotland to be convicted of rape for secretly not using a condom during sex was a serial rapist obsessed with extreme pornography. In a historic prosecution, Luke Oscar Ford was convicted of rape for “stealthing” - removing or not using a condom during sex without a partner’s consent.
Ford was last week (Friday) found guilty of raping and abusing seven women and forcing one to watch sex between animals and people. Glasgow High Court heard Ford sexually, physically and psychologically abused his partners over a twelve year period from the age of 18.
Ford, 33, from Stirling was a jobbing actor and model who starred in Deacon Blue video “This is a Love Song” and claimed he was a stand in for Brad Pitt on the film World War Z.
On dating apps he targeted successful professional women, love bombing them and quickly moving into their homes to leech off them financially.
Ford was convicted of five counts of rape including the stealthing charge after the woman, a psychologist had only consented to sex with a condom but he then deceived her and didn’t use one.
He was also found guilty of two rapes of a 41 year-old luxury fashion buyer he met in 2008 after she had come out of an abusive relationship.
She said: “When we met I was at a low and when someone tells you you look amazing, it’s exciting and intense you latch on to it.”
After he secured women’s trust, he shifted tack, undermining them with horrendous verbal abuse and criticism of their looks, their weight and their personalities.
He told women they were his “social” and “psychological experiments” and wrote lengthy lists of their “flaws” and “things you should work on”.
Ford took intimate videos and photographs of them, often covertly and threatened to show the images to their employers and family if they didn’t bend to his will.
One victim said he would fly into sudden rages throughout their one year relationship.
The woman told the court: “Dealing with his temper was like walking up to the executioner’s block. You just wanted it over with.”
Sobbing throughout her evidence she said he derided her as fat, “a washed out hag” who needed a boob job and she was privileged to date him.
The woman said he was obsessed with sex and extreme pornography, including bestiality.
At one point, he gripped her head to stop her turning away in disgust and screamed: “Don’t be sick on my sheets b***h”.
Ford was convicted of possessing large quantities of bestialty pornography on his phone and laptop and he admitted to searching and bookmarking dozens of rape fantasy videos.
In one day alone he searched “forced sex” on a porn site 15 times.
In evidence he told Advocate Depute Leanne Cross he was just being “daft”.
But she said: “Actually you enjoy seeing women in degrading situations don’t you?”
Another victim, a scientist was 21 when she met Ford in 2011 on a dating app and shortly into their four year relationship he was already exerting control.
He raped her in the bedroom of his father’s home in Stirling.
She said: “I said no but it didn’t matter. I cried throughout it.”
He was also convicted of attempting to rape another woman he met on Tinder.
Another partner, a 34 year-old animator, he met on Tinder in 2015 told how “the mask came off” soon into their nine month relationship.
Ford could “switch” into a rage, calling her a “bitch”, “whore”, and deriding her as fat.
She said: “As time goes on, you start to believe it. I felt powerless.”
Deluded he was a gifted artist, he dismissed her as uninspiring.
He texted: “Poetry doesn’t work on whores.”
In 2016, he met a PR when she was 39 and he was 26 and she was quickly charmed by him and he moved into her Edinburgh apartment.
For three years he was her domestic abuser, he strangled her on numerous occasions, left her scarred when he battered her head off a car window and criticised and controlled her.
She told the court she loved him but it was “like trying to love a poisonous snake”.
He ordered her to write down a dictated list of her failings.
The PR said:”That was the beginning of him trying to break me. I became a shell of who I was. I hated myself by the end.”
He gave her black eyes when he smashed her face off a window in her apartment, he physically abused her and spat in her face.
Ford was gripped by jealousy when she took a holiday abroad with girlfriends.
He called her more than 100 times and texted:”I will track you down and act like a f***ing scumbag”.
Two of his victims were strangled as he raped them.
One who was raped in February 2020 said she couldn’t breathe as he squeezed on her throat.
She said: “I tried to say no but his grip was too tight on my vocal chords and no sound came out.”
Ford was only stopped when a girlfriend called police and he was arrested for attempting to strangle her in June 2020.
She said: “He just went dead in the eyes and lunged at me and grabbed me by the throat. I thought he was going to kill me.”
Ford was remanded and will be sentenced at later date.
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