Bizarre Church We Investigated is Accused of Slavery

Lisa
The Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF) we investigated in the 90’s has recently been accused of enticing Brazilian nationals here to be used as slave labor.  16 Brazilians told the AP (read here) they were lured here with promises of learning English, gaining a college education, seeing a bit of the US, and improving their relationship with God, yet were forced to work as slaves.
Our investigator, who spent months undercover inside this church during the mid 90s and underwent 11 exorcisms while there, also remembers that fellow congregants were required to work for senior church leaders.
Ex-members interviewed during that time period by the Trinity Foundation related similar stories of being packed into suburban homes turned into communal compounds and forced into minimum-wage jobs, working for church leaders.
A local policeman, interviewed by Inside Edition at the time, told of helping a foreign national escape and being met at the airport by church leaders attempting to prevent the youngster from leaving the country.
This Wednesday, March 29, 2017 photo shows Ana Albuquerque, 25, during an interview in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Albuquerque traveled to the Word of Faith Fellowship church in Spindale, N.C., from Brazil 11 times over the course of more than a decade, starting at age 5 with her parents. Over time, she said she witnessed so much screaming and shoving to “expunge devils” that she began to see the behavior as normal. Silvia Izquierdo AP Photo

 

This undated photo provided in 2017 by a former member of the Word of Faith Fellowship from Brazil shows founder Jane Whaley with children at the church in Spindale, N.C. Members visit the Spindale compound from around the world, but Brazil is the biggest source of foreign labor and Whaley and her top lieutenants visit the Brazilian outposts several times a year, the Associated Press has found. AP Photo)
This Wednesday, March 29, 2017 photo shows people at the Word of Faith Fellowship church in Sao Joaquim de Bicas, Brazil. 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, N.C. Silvia Izquierdo AP Photo

 

In this Wednesday, March 29, 2017 photo, Ana Albuquerque explains how she was spanked during an interview in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Bent over a desk, Albuquerque says church founder Jane Whaley and another member repeatedly spanked her with a flat piece of wood while screaming that she was “unclean” and possessed by the devil when she was 16. Silvia Izquierdo AP Photo

 

This February 2016 photo shows Andre Oliveira in Spindale, N.C. When 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. Mitch Weiss AP Photo