North Carolina steps in on child abuse cases involving sect
Source: Associated Press
Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press
Updated 2:54 pm, Friday, December 8, 2017
Photo: AP
IMAGE 1 OF 3 FILE - In this 2012 provided by a former member of the church, Word of Faith Fellowship leader Jane Whaley, center left, holds a congregation member's infant, accompanied by her husband, Sam, center right, and others during a ceremony in the church's compound in Spindale, N.C. In an unprecedented move, North Carolina’s state child welfare agency will participate in reviewing every new allegation of abuse and neglect involving a controversial church that has been the focus of an Associated Press investigation exposing years of physical and emotional mistreatment of congregants, including children.
SPINDALE, North Carolina (AP) — In an unprecedented move, North Carolina's state child welfare agency will participate in reviewing every new allegation of abuse and neglect involving a controversial church that has been the focus of an Associated Press investigation exposing years of physical and emotional mistreatment of congregants, including children.
Under North Carolina's child welfare system, county agencies are responsible for investigating abuse allegations. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services provides oversight and training, but generally does not get involved in a county agency's daily operations.
The state would not say what prompted the move, but it follows a series of AP stories that have cited dozens of former Word of Faith Fellowship members who say congregants are regularly beaten to "purify" sinners. Founded in 1979, the evangelical sect has grown to about 750 congregants in North Carolina and a total of nearly 2,000 other followers worldwide.
As part of a 2005 settlement of a federal lawsuit filed by Word of Faith against the Rutherford County Department of Social Services claiming religious persecution, investigators labor under a series of restrictions when looking into allegations of abuse within the sect.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/North-Carolina-steps-in-on-child-abuse-cases-12416338.php
Report: North Carolina Church Importing Human Slaves From Brazil
JULY 24, 2017 BY MICHAEL STONE
. . .
AP reports on some of the the horrific stories told by the victims:
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.
…
“They kept us as slaves,” Oliveira said, pausing at times to wipe away tears. “We were expendable. We meant nothing to them. Nothing. How can you do that to people — claim you love them and then beat them in the name of God?”
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2017/07/report-north-carolina-church-importing-human-slaves-brazil/#JV24GxEhdcv6sBbh.99
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