A North Carolina church used its two branches in Brazil to siphon young laborers to its 35-acre compound in rural Spindale, where they were forced to work — often for no pay, according to a shocking new report.

“They trafficked us up here. They knew what they were doing. They needed labor and we were cheap labor — hell, free labor,” Andre Oliveira told the Associated Press.

Oliveira, who fled the church last year, is one of 16 Brazilian former members who said they were forced to work and were physically or verbally assaulted.

He said he was 18 when he left the Word of Faith Fellowship in Brazil for the secretive mother church, whose leaders confiscated his passport and money.

The young man said he was forced to toil 15 hours a day, first cleaning warehouses and later working at businesses owned by senior ministers, the AP reported.

Any deviation from the rules risked incurring the wrath of church leaders — ranging from beatings to shaming from the pulpit, he 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?”

Many males worked in construction while females worked as babysitters and in the church’s K-12 school, the former members said.

One former congregant said she was only 12 the first time she was put to work.

Visitors on tourist visas are not permitted to perform work for which people normally would be compensated — and those with student visas are allowed some work, under conditions that were not met at Word of Faith Fellowship, the AP found.

At least several hundred young Brazilians have migrated to North Carolina in the past two decades, the AP reported.

In 2014, three former congregants told US officials about being forced to work for no compensation, according to a recording obtained by the AP.

“And do they beat up the Brazilians?” asked Jill Rose, now the US attorney in Charlotte.

“Most definitely,” one of the former congregants replied. Ministers “mostly bring them up here for free work,” another said.

Rose could be heard promising to investigate the matter, but the former members said she never responded when they repeatedly tried to contact her for months after the meeting.

Rose declined to comment to the AP, citing an ongoing investigation.

The church has rarely been sanctioned since it was founded in 1979 by sect leader Jane Whaley, a former math teacher, and her husband, Sam.

Under Jane Whaley’s leadership, the church grew from a handful of followers to about 750 congregants in North Carolina and a total of nearly 2,000 members in Brazil and Ghana, and its affiliates in Sweden, Scotland and other countries.

Former congregant Thiago Silva said he was excited when he flew from Belo Horizonte to attend a Word of Faith youth seminar in North Carolina in 2001, when he was 18.

But he soon learned that there would be “no happiness.”

“Brazilians came here for labor. I’m telling you — that’s it,” Silva said.