Judge Orders Trial of Sunday School Teacher in 2 Rapes

A Sunday school teacher was ordered Tuesday to stand trial in the rapes of two women he met at church functions and then asked to tap into their Christian charity and forgive him.

“Are you going to pray for me or expose me?” Simon Pryce, 28, allegedly asked a 27-year-old Van Nuys woman after raping her in August, according to her testimony in Van Nuys Municipal Court.

She called the police.

During the investigation of that case, another woman told police Pryce had raped her last summer, authorities said.

The women testified they met Pryce through the Church of the Harvest, 2600 S. La Brea Ave. To gain access to their apartments, they said, he used the ruse of needing to talk to the women. Church officials could not be reached for comment.

Pryce contends the sex was consensual, said his lawyer, Alex Kessel.

“He indicated to me that there’s a different version than what those women said,” Kessel said. “Without going into specifics, it was consensual. Absolutely.”

At the end of the preliminary hearing, Municipal Judge Leslie Dunn ruled there was enough evidence to try Pryce. He is being held in jail in lieu of $1.8 million bond.

Pryce met the Van Nuys woman over the summer, when they both worked on a committee to plan a youth conference for the church. The woman led the group, and the committee met at her home.

She said Pryce called her at home late one night saying he was having some problems and needed to talk to her. He asked if he could come over and she agreed.

Almost immediately after he arrived, she said, he overpowered her and forced himself on her. After raping her, she said, Pryce told her: “I know what I did was wrong, but I’m not perfect.”

The other woman, who is 38 and lives in Los Angeles, said she had met Pryce at the church and they had begun a friendship.

He asked to drop by on June 30, she said. After a few minutes of sitting in her living room watching a religious show on TV and flipping through a Bible, he overpowered and raped her, she said.

Afterward, she said, he told her he was sorry, and she forgave him and prayed for him.

“He made the comment that we can handle this between the two of us, that we can start over and he loves me as a sister in Christ,” she said.

A month later, he arrived at her house in the middle of the night and said he needed to talk to her. He again overpowered her and raped her, she said.

“I felt from our prior conversation that we had resolved things and this wasn’t going to happen again,” she said.