RIO DE JANEIRO - Vasco da Gama has been ordered by a juvenile justice judge to immediately suspend activities at its youth training facilities because an investigation found teenage footballers were living in "slave-like" conditions.
Judge Ivone Ferreira Caetana issued the ruling on Wednesday in response to charges by state prosecutors who have been looking into conditions at the club's main youth facilities in Sao Januario since 2009.
It was only in February, after a 14-year-old boy died while trying out in Itaguai, a more remote training centre, that investigators even learned of the existence of that facility, which housed dozens of boys aged from 13 to 17.
Since then, they've learned there were no doctors available on site when the boy, Wendel Venancio da Silva, died.
In an investigation since then, prosecutors found the boys were lodged in deplorable conditions and not fed enough as they were pushed through a grueling routine that left them with little time for school, said main prosecutor Clisanger Ferreira Goncalves in a statement.
In addition to denouncing the teenagers' poor housing and nutrition and their strenuous schedule, prosecutors also charged the club with transporting the teenagers in an unsafe vehicle, failing to provide them with medical care, and exposing them to unsanitary facilities.