David Ford
By Kelly Cantwell
Editor

David Ford, 38, received the maximum sentence possible after assaulting and raping a woman in Bethel.

Ford was charged with three counts of rape, one count of felonious assault and one count of aggravated burglary, all first degree felonies, with a specification that he is a repeat violent offender, said Assistant Prosecutor Scott O’Reilly in December.

However, one count of rape and one count of kidnapping was dropped.

The victim did not know Ford before Oct. 13, 2015, when he entered her apartment and physically and sexually assaulted her before he was interrupted by neighbors and fled.

He was found in Kentucky and was indicted on Dec. 3.

Judge Jerry McBride sentenced Ford to 30 years on June 2, 11 for rape, 11 for aggravated burglary and eight for felonious assault, the maximum Ford could have received, O’Reilly said.

This is not Ford’s first time in prison; he served six years for an attempted rape and kidnapping in Sharonville in 2001 and four years for failing to register, as Ford, a registered sex offender, stopped reporting where he was living.

Ford had only been out of jail for three or four months when he committed the crime in Bethel, which was extremely similar to what he did in Sharonville in 2001, the largest difference being he did not succeed in raping the victim in Sharonville. However, both victims were strangers and were violently assaulted.

The first punishment appears to have made no impact on Ford, O’Reilly said, and the psychologist who evaluated Ford in 2001 and the psychologist who evaluated Ford for this case both made very similar statements about him.

“The crime itself is inherently terrible,” O’Reilly said.

He thanked the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office for their work on this case.

“The Sheriff’s Office did a remarkable job investigating the case,” O’Reilly said.