An infamous pair of street preachers in London, ON have been charged under a new nuisance bylaw in the Ontario city. 

Steven Ravbar and Matthew Carapella were charged with five counts each of violating the city's public nuisance bylaw on Friday. If convicted, they could face a fine of $10,000 per offence.

CTV London reports that the city had received 75 complaints about the pair so far this year.

Confronting women

The pair are well known for yelling at women and accusing them of being unholy.

Genevieve Forsyth is a grad student at Western University in London, ON, who was confronted by the preachers recently. "He called me a whore and asked me why I want to take over the world."

Forsyth, who is 6' 3" tall, said that one of the men then told her that the devil made her that tall, and that she should not be wearing pants.

Forsyth says she wouldn't necessarily consider herself a Christian, but that the encounter hasn't skewed her view on Christianity or Christians in general.

"I just think they're a couple of nutcases who've found these certain quotes in the Bible and taken them out of context and written them on big sandwich boards. I think they get a lot of pleasure out of having an excuse to scream at women on the streets."  

Interrupting church services

Anne Hodgen-Loohuizen and her husband Bob Loohuizen pastor Exeter Pentecostal Tabernacle in Exeter, ON, just north of London.

Hodgen-Loohuizen says that the pair of street preachers recently come to the church's Sunday morning worship gathering. 

"They came into our church and at the start they were quiet. Right before my husband got up to preach they stood up and started telling us all what an abomination we were and that women were whores for wearing pants and makeup and wearing short hair."

The pair were escorted out of the church, and the police were called. However, Hodgen-Loohuizen says before the police arrived the pair went to the Baptist church in Exeter and disrupted their communion service.

While police in Exeter told the churches there wasn't much they could do, it is a federal offence in Canada to disrupt a church service.

According to Bill C-51 it is illegal to prevent or obstruct clergy from celebrating or performing divine services. Bill C-51 also says that anyone "who wilfully disturbs or interrupts an assemblage of persons met for religious worship or for a moral, social or benevolent purpose is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction."

This isn't the first run-in with the law for the preachers. Last winter they were arrested in Shreveport, LA. They had been asked to leave at least three churches on that trip. They had also interrupted church services in South Carolina in January of 2018.