Brazil branches of U.S.-based church face investigation by prosecutors
RIO DE JANEIRO—Every day before work, Liliane Souza says, she and three dozen fellow workers at a Brazilian picture-framing factory affiliated with the Word of Faith Fellowship church were obligated to pray.
When workers made a mistake, such as cutting a frame too short, she says they were screamed at and sometimes even hit to expunge the “devil” behind the error. And when Stylofino stopped paying its workers for months, Souza said the company’s co-owners—members of a Brazilian branch of the U.S.-based church—had a ready explanation.
“They said the business was struggling because we were sinners,” she said.
The business and its labor practices are under investigation by Brazilian authorities—just one of several inquiries launched into a pair of churches connected to Word of Faith Fellowship, a secretive evangelical sect based in Spindale, North Carolina.
The Associated Press has learned that Brazilian prosecutors also are looking into possible improprieties in a land deal involving one of the churches. And education ministries in two Brazilian states said they are investigating allegations that church schools physically and psychologically abused students and redacted textbooks in violation of state policy.
The investigations were spurred by AP stories in July detailing allegations that Word of Faith Fellowship created a pipeline of young congregants who say they were brought to the U.S. from Brazil and forced to work at church-affiliated businesses for little or no pay. The stories also documented how the church steadily took over the two Brazilian congregations, instituting a fundamentalist vision that included verbal and physical abuse aimed at expelling devils.
Pastors at the Word of Faith Fellowship branches—located in the Brazilian cities of Sao Joaquim de Bicas and Franco da Rocha—have issued statements denying the accusations, but did not respond to numerous interview requests from the AP.
After the stories about the Brazilian churches were published in July, authorities in both Brazil and the United States launched investigations into the allegations of abuse, forced labor and visa fraud. Investigators told the AP that interviews stemming from that ongoing probe led them to scrutinize the conditions at Stylofino.
The small factory in the Sao Paulo suburb of Franco da Rocha was opened in 2000 by Gerson Jose Garcia and Juarez de Souza Oliveira, according to tax records.
De Souza Oliveira and wife Solange Granieri founded Ministerio Evangelico Comunidade Rhema, or Rhema Community Evangelical Ministry, in 1988. Garcia is a long-time member of the church, which includes an adjoining school.
Eight former factory workers interviewed by the AP described a rigid working environment that mirrored the religious fervor of the church and school. Only members of the church could work there: Leaving the church meant leaving the job.
The employees said they were paid minimum wage and worked most national holidays, late at night and on weekends, but never were paid overtime. They were pressured into signing falsified time sheets that reflected vacations never taken and only the limited hours they were supposed to be working, they said.
They also said they were not provided lunch stipends or allowed to sell a portion of their holidays for pay, both of which are mandated by Brazilian law.
Three of the former workers said they began part time while in high school, working off the books as “volunteers” for no compensation.
Andre Oliveira said he started at the factory in 2007 while still in high school and continued into 2009 about eight months after graduating, working almost every day from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. for no pay.
“I never received even a cent,” said Oliveira, who broke with the church last year and now lives in the United States.
He said he feared that refusing to work would have led to being kicked out of church or “blasting,” a practice in which followers surround a congregant and scream, often for hours.
The workers told the AP that, beginning in 2011, many employees were not paid their regular salaries for more than a year, instead receiving payments months late or just a portion of what they were owed. Employees who complained or said they needed money to pay bills were more likely to get paid, the former members said.
They said the owners blamed the suspension of salaries on the factory having money problems due to workers sinning. Prayer increased, they said, and anybody who questioned what was going on was subjected to blasting.
“They would say, ‘ A demon took you over! You are out of your mind!” said a former worker who left the church and factory in 2012 and recently gave testimony to federal police.