UPDATED::Brazilian prosecutors sue to shut church over forced labor | The Seattle Times

UPDATE:: Prosecutor: minors at risk of forced labor at Brazil church

Minors remain at risk and are being forced to work against their will by a Brazilian church with ties to the U.S.-based Word of Faith Fellowship, a senior labor prosecutor said Wednesday after the initial hearing in a civil suit seeking the dissolution of the local church and the school it runs.

The Ministerio Evangelico Comunidade Rhema church in the city of Franco da Rocha has refused to cease practices that authorities have alleged amount to forced labor, said Catarina von Zuben, the national coordinator for prosecutors who work on combatting modern-day slavery in Brazil.

"This action aims to make these practices stop, to make this exploitation stop, particularly of minors, of children," von Zuben told The Associated Press after the closed hearing.

Brazilian authorities opened multiple investigations after the AP reported in July that leaders of Word of Faith Fellowship — based in rural Spindale, North Carolina — created a pipeline of young Brazilian congregants who told of being taken to the U.S. and forced to work for little or no pay.

Brazilian labor prosecutors have filed suit to shut down a church and school with ties to the U.S.-based Word of Faith Fellowship, saying the church and its leaders “reduced people to a condition analogous to slavery.”

Brazilian authorities opened multiple investigations after The Associated Press reported in July that leaders of Word of Faith Fellowship in rural Spindale, North Carolina, created a pipeline of young Brazilian congregants who told the AP they were brought to the U.S. and forced to work for little or no pay.

The focus of the civil suit is Ministerio Evangelico Comunidade Rhema, Word of Faith’s branch in the city of Franco da Rocha, along with that branch’s church-run school and its two ministers, Solange da Silva Granieri Oliveira and Juarez de Souza Oliveira.

In the March 1 filing in a labor court in Sao Paulo state, prosecutors included extensive excerpts from depositions laying out harrowing details of a wide range of abuses within the Rhema church, including how long the marks from a beating with a ruler were evident on a child’s body.

Brazilian prosecutors sue to shut church over forced labor | The Seattle Times