Man Held in Online Soliciting

A former religion teacher at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center has been charged with using the Internet to solicit sex with a onetime pupil, prosecutors said Thursday.

Guy Raz, 35, was taken into custody by FBI agents and sheriff’s deputies Wednesday afternoon when he showed up for a meeting with the 13-year-old girl at the Altadena public library.

Inside his car, investigators said, they found a long-stem red rose, a box of condoms and an envelope addressed to the girl.

Investigators said the girl’s parents contacted them earlier this month after she began receiving sexual solicitations from Raz via the Internet.

Raz obtained the girl’s e-mail address and those of other students while teaching a religion class at the temple last year, according to an investigator’s affidavit.

In one message, Raz allegedly wrote: “Being a bat mitzvah is about entering womanhood. . . . And there’s one aspect of that I’d prefer to show you in person.”

Raz also discussed specific sexual acts and invited the teenager to come to his home in Encino but not tell her parents, investigators said.

After being shown printouts of his e-mail messages, investigators from the Southern California regional sexual assault felony enforcement team, a multi-agency task force, posed as the teenager online and carried on several more e-mail exchanges with Raz.

During one of those exchanges, Raz allegedly agreed to meet the girl in the Altadena library’s ancient studies section. He was arrested after he got out of his car.

He is being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center pending a bail hearing before a federal magistrate Tuesday. If convicted, he faces a maximum 15 years in prison.

Debby Singer, education director at the Pasadena synagogue, said Raz taught there on a part-time basis during the 1999-2000 school year and as a full-time instructor the following academic year. She said his contract was not renewed when it expired in June.