A pair of street preachers who regularly harass women on the streets of Ontario, Canada, have found themselves in a bit of hot water because police are now investigating them, after calls about “two unwanted males” who were “walking along the sidewalk making inappropriate comments to women.”
That’s what Ashley Dietrich, a constable with the Waterloo Regional Police Department had to say in a statement to CBC News.
So-called “street preachers” Steven Ravbar and Matthew Carapella normally do this on London, Ontario’s busiest intersection. Wearing biblically-themed sandwich boards and speaking into a megaphone, the men often yell messages aimed specifically at women regarding their perceived sins, Friendly Atheist notes.
But then Ravbar and Carapella decided to take their misogynistic act on the road, to Waterloo, which is an hour or so away from London. They perhaps wish they hadn’t met Karen Nancarrow, herself a retired preacher. The two men allegedly began yelling slurs at her and a nearby group of young women who were waiting to cross the street.
According to Val Wilde, writing for Friendly Atheist, Nancarrow had this to say:
“They started yelling at me, calling me all kinds of names. They said ‘I bet you’re a whore, I bet you’re a prostitute, you’re probably one of those feminists. You should be home serving your husband’s needs instead of working.”
Their harassment has been so bad that some women say they avoid the downtown area completely, having suffered contentious encounters with them. Some, like London resident Kira Rader, have stood up for themselves.
“I consider them harassers. I saw them once eating and I stood next to them [telling people], ‘These are the asshole preachers!'”
She then decided to follow them down the street — because after all, that’s what they did to her.
“[One time] I walked up to them during the harlot rant, and said: ‘Look! Wearing pants and showing my tits!’ and flashed them. The reaction was too good, and I kept doing it when I saw them.”
Rader said that while she’s a humanist and that religion should be free, it “cannot justify harassment.”
The two men have been so obnoxious that the city of London has amended its public nuisance bylaws to specifically address their shenanigans. Within the first three months of 2019, 75 complaints flooded in and thanks to the new law, the men have now found themselves charged with multiple violations.
Ravbar and Carabella are followers of American doomsday preacher William Branham, who died in 1965. In his sermons, Branham compared women to animals, saying they should not be allowed to wear pants or to work outside the home.
Featured image via Shutterstock
