Church Fighting Allegations of Decades of Abuse

Word of Faith Fellowship (WFF), an international Protestant church based in Spindale, North Carolina, was the subject of an exposé by the Associated Press on July 24, in a piece about allegations that WFF brought church members from Brazil into the United States on tourist and student visas and then forced them to work without pay, essentially enslaving those they pretended to evangelize.

WFF vehemently denied these allegations, stating in a July 30 press release that “we are appalled to learn of the allegations published by the Associated Press regarding foreign members of our church being ‘enslaved.’ Many of these allegations are obviously preposterous on their face and they are all false.”

A testimonial on WFF’s website has called the AP “fake news.” borrowing President Trump’s popular phrase.

AP based its claims on interviews with 16 Brazilian former church members who said they were forced to work without pay and were abused both physically and verbally. Children as young as 12 were allegedly brought from Brazil and put to work immediately at WFF’s property in North Carolina . . .

WFF said such allegations are “ludicrous” and pointed out “people now claim they were in an abusive environment at our church but admit that they traveled from Brazil to the United States many different times, returning repeatedly to their place of alleged enslavement.” (Read more from “Church Fighting Allegations of Decades of Abuse” HERE)

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