Latin America

Judi Lynn

(160,533 posts) Wed Apr 11, 2018, 06:11 PM Apr 2018

Prosecutor: minors at risk of forced labor at Brazil church

Sarah Dilorenzo and Peter Prengaman, Associated Press
Updated 5:00 pm, Wednesday, April 11, 2018

FRANCO DA ROCHA, Brazil (AP) — A senior Brazilian labor prosecutor says minors remain at risk and are being forced to work against their will by a church with ties to the U.S.-based Word of Faith Fellowship.

Catarina von Zuben said Wednesday that the Ministerio Evangelico Comunidade Rhema church has refused to cease practices that authorities allege amount to slavery.

Von Zuben is the national coordinator for prosecutors who work on combatting modern-day slavery in Brazil. She spoke to The Associated Press after the first hearing in a civil suit in which prosecutors are seeking the dissolution of the church in Franco da Rocha and the school it runs.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Prosecutor-minors-at-risk-of-forced-labor-at-12826483.php

LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142035508

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Prosecutor: minors at risk of forced labor at Brazil church (Original Post) Judi Lynn Apr 2018 OP

They kept us as slaves: AP reveals claims against church Judi Lynn Apr 2018 #1

Judi Lynn

(160,533 posts)

1. They kept us as slaves: AP reveals claims against church

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Wed Apr 11, 2018, 06:16 PM

Apr 2018

By MITCH WEISS, HOLBROOK MOHR and PETER PRENGAMAN
Jul. 24, 2017

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — When Andre Oliveira answered the call to leave his Word of Faith Fellowship congregation in Brazil to move to the mother church in North Carolina at the age of 18, his passport and money were confiscated by church leaders — for safekeeping, he said he was told.

Trapped in a foreign land, he said he was forced to work 15 hours a day, usually for no pay, first cleaning warehouses for the secretive evangelical church and later toiling at businesses owned by senior ministers. Any deviation from the rules risked the wrath of church leaders, he said, ranging from beatings to shaming from the pulpit.

“They trafficked us up here. They knew what they were doing. They needed labor and we were cheap labor — hell, free labor,” Oliveira said.

An Associated Press investigation has found that Word of Faith Fellowship used its two church branches in Latin America’s largest nation to siphon a steady flow of young laborers who came on tourist and student visas to its 35-acre compound in rural Spindale.

More:
https://apnews.com/52dc4fbe2fb64cec98740ad1e62b2115

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