  In this paper we extend the color dipole formalism to the study of exclusive
processes associated with a leading neutron in $ep$ collisions at high
energies. The exclusive $\rho$, $\phi$ and $J/\Psi$ production, as well as the
Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering, are analysed assuming a diffractive
interaction between the color dipole and the pion emitted by the incident
proton. We compare our predictions with the HERA data on $\rho$ production and
estimate the magnitude of the absorption corrections. We show that the color
dipole formalism is able to describe the current data. Finally, we present our
estimate for the exclusive cross sections which can be studied at HERA and in
future electron-proton colliders.
