Convicted of Impersonating Officer : Lay Minister Acquitted of Raping 2 Prostitutes

A Christian youth leader was acquitted Monday of raping two prostitutes whom he admitted summoning to his parents’ house last year in what he contended was a prank.

Orange County Superior Court jurors found John Randolph Sykes, 35, not guilty of nine felony charges of raping and sodomizing the two women last February in separate incidents only hours apart.

Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald dismissed four other felony counts of rape on which the jurors deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of acquitting Sykes. The jury did convict the lay minister of two misdemeanor counts of impersonating a policeman.

The verdicts ended a trial that took more than five weeks--longer than some murder trials--and offered language more usually heard in a barracks than in a court. Crowds of spectators packed the courtroom each day for an education in the world of pimps and prostitutes, “escort services” and sex for hire.

Sykes and his supporters told the jury he was not only a Christian youth leader but also a prankster, the sort who once let a pig loose in a church and who used to scare people by impersonating a policeman and threatening to arrest them.

Prostitute Summoned as Joke

Sykes testified that for a joke he summoned a prostitute to the Yorba Linda house of his parents while they were on vacation last February and pretended to be a policeman investigating vice rings. He handcuffed her and said she was under arrest. It was so much fun, he did the same thing soon afterward to another prostitute, he said, while a 20-year-old woman friend, Victoria Long, hid in a closet and watched.

But Sykes denied the testimony of the two admitted prostitutes that he stripped, raped and brutalized them.

In her closing argument to the jury, Sykes’ attorney, Jennifer Keller, said the trial reminded her of the movie “Elmer Gantry,” in which Burt Lancaster portrayed “a smooth-talking minister who turned out to be something of a womanizer, something of a hypocrite and not all he seemed to be.” Sykes was not like that, Keller contended.

But Sykes did not fit the usual image of a minister, either. He lived in a beach house on Balboa, drove a red Triumph sports car and jetted to various cities in the country to discuss youth ministries.

Telephoned Escort Service

On Feb. 6, 1984, Sykes testified, he telephoned an escort service listed in the Yellow Pages and had a prostitute sent to the house.

With Long peeking out from her hiding place in an upstairs closet, she and Sykes testified, Sykes identified himself as a police officer, told the prostitute she was under arrest and handcuffed her. But as he always planned, he quickly let her go, Sykes said.

“Did you ever touch her in any sexual fashion?” Keller asked. “Never,” Sykes replied. “I never, there or downstairs, I never touched her.”

After the woman left, Sykes said, he and Long agreed about “the whole excitement of the adventure we were trying to pull off; it went perfectly.”

But the woman told a much different story. She said Sykes raped and sodomized her, hurting her so badly that she drove around in confusion for hours after she left his home. She said she was troubled by bleeding for two weeks and was nearly unable to get out of bed during that time.

The second prostitute’s story was much the same as her colleague’s as she described how her services were offered. A man would call the service, which would contact her. She would telephone the potential client and tell him the price--$50 for the service, $100 for her. Before accepting payment by credit card, she would require identification bearing the client’s picture, as well as a piece of mail with his name and address on it.

Slipped Handcuffs on Her

The second prostitute said that after reaching the house and talking with Sykes, he told her she was under arrest, flashed a badge and gun at her and slipped handcuffs onto her wrists.

Sykes told her that “if I’d have sex with him . . . he’d see I didn’t have to go to jail,” she said. She said she did, in part because, “There’s not much you can do when you’re handcuffed and the guy has a gun.”

The second woman’s story unfolded in strings of profanities that tripped from her lips in seeming disregard of the giggles and guffaws from spectators and some of the jurors.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jill Roberts told the jurors that the woman’s language showed “she is what she is; she’s no phony.”

In contrast, she called Long’s testimony about hiding in the closet “complete and unadulterated baloney.”

Roberts could not, however, persuade Judge Fitzgerald to let the jurors hear testimony from the Rev. Edgar Neuenschwander, a Baptist minister who said Sykes had in the past engaged in “sexual misconduct” with three women belonging to his church. The minister said Sykes had admitted to him that he had an “uncontrollable” sexual problem.

Fitzgerald ruled that Neuenschwander’s testimony was part of a clergyman-penitent conversation, which could not be introduced in court. Outside court, Sykes denied ever saying he had a sexual problem that was beyond control.

Spoke With Jurors

After the verdict, Sykes spoke with some of the jurors and said they told him they did not believe Long’s story about hiding in the closet, but they did not believe the prosecution had enough evidence to convict him, either.

“I’m very pleased that this particular nightmare, in terms of going to prison (on the felony charges) is over,” Sykes said outside the court. “But my life is destroyed.”

He said his job as a minister is finished due to the publicity surrounding his arrest and trial, and “I’ll never work with kids again” because of his reputation.

Yet, Sykes said, although he is $50,000 in debt to his parents and has been unable to work since his arrest a month after the incidents, “I’m creative. And life goes on, and I’ll go on.”