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 was told.  The 18 year old was forced to work 15 hours a day, usually for no pay, first cleaning warehouses for the evangelical church and later working at businesses owned by the sect’s senior ministers. Any violation of the rules risked the wrath of church leaders, he said, ranging from beatings to shaming from the pulpit. The Word of Faith Fellowship has  750 congregants in North Carolina and nearly 2,000 members in its churches in Brazil and Ghana.

“They kept us as slaves,” Oliveira told the AP. “How can you do that to people — claim you love them and then beat them in the name of God?”  Female Brazilians worked as babysitters and in the church’s K-12 school, and many males worked in construction including work on private property of  a senior church minister.

Under U.S. law, visitors on tourist visas are prohibited from performing work for which people normally would be compensated. Those on student visas are allowed some work, under circumstances that were not met at Word of Faith Fellowship, the AP found.

Jill Rose, now the U.S. attorney in Charlotte, promised she would “take a fresh look at it,” according to the recording. But the former members said she never responded when they repeatedly tried to contact her in the months after the meeting.  Rose declined to comment to the AP, citing an ongoing investigation.