Florida is known around the world for its strange news, something immortalised in reddit’s ‘Florida Man’ thread, which collects the oddest headlines to do with folks who reside there.

We do mean strange – check out the top ranked posts:

Who gives cocaine to their greyhounds?

Unfortunately this story is a little darker, because ‘Mother Anna’ (real name Anna Elizabeth Young) has a very hectic backstory.

The 75-year-old was arrested last week for the premeditated first-degree murder of a child, charges stemming from the death of Emon Harper in the late 1980s.

Young was the leader of The House of Prayer for All People, which opened in the backwood swamplands of Micanopy in 1983. For nearly a decade, children arrived at the religious boarding school and into the care of Young.

As the Washington Post reports, it wasn’t the kind of place a child wanted to end up:

…they were tortured and abused in a religious cult atmosphere that included exorcism and chemical baths.

Decades later, police are only now beginning to understand what may have happened at the site.

“Witnesses came forward from the House of Prayer alleging brutality and even some children being murdered,” Art Forgey, a spokesman with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office told ABC 20 last week. “It’s not just one isolated incident of beatings. There were numerous children that were beaten, locked in solitary confinement, food-withheld.”

Authorities fear that the worst is still to come, with Young – referred to as a “former cult leader” in a law enforcement news release – suspected of further crimes at the isolated Florida compound where she once lived.

She was actually charged as far back as 1992:

…the charges stemmed from when Young allegedly bathed a 12-year-old girl with chemicals in a steel tub, leaving her with severe burns. Young fled the state. She was located eight years later living in an attic in a relative’s house in Illinois. Court records indicated that she pleaded no contest and was sentenced to six months in prison 2001.

Young is now in custody, pending extradition to Florida from Georgia.

As Forgey stated during a recent interview, “this is just the tip of the iceberg that we know of”.

[source:washpost]