What is the current situation with the leader of the House of Prayer cult, Mother Anna Young?

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The video attached to this story is from when Anna Young’s daughter gave First Coast News an inside look at the House of Prayer. It was filmed in 2021. 

It was three years this week since cult leader Anna Young died only 42 days into her 30 year prison sentence. 

Young killed Katonya Jackson, 2, and Emon Harper, who was a toddler at the time. She also likely killed her step-daughter, Catherine Davidson, whose body was never found. 

Katona and Emon were members of the House of Prayer, a cult in Alachua County. Young was the matriarch of the group.

The House of Prayer cult was located in Micanopy, and was not affiliated with other churches by the same name. It was advertised as a safe haven and a place for second chances, particularly for people seeking salvation. 

But Young developed a dark interpretation of the Pentecostal faith, and was apprehended for torture and abuse she claimed would absolve members of their sins — such as whipping them, starving them, caging them and in one known case, throwing bleach on their skin. 

The case is being featured in the Hulu series “Cult Justice,” and recently re-entered the public eye. Three years after the case reached its end, here’s a look back at the story of the House of Prayer.

The House of Prayer was founded by Young in the 1980s.

The House of Prayer was supposed to be a “safe haven for people who had committed wrongdoings,” Young’s daughter, Joy Fluker, told First Coast News in a 2021 interview. It was supposed to be a place where they could start again.

Nearly two dozen people joined “Mother Anna” — as they called Young — over the next decade, including children, who attended her religious boarding school. 

Members idolized Young. “They started looking at her as the voice of God,” Fluker said.

She believes that power corrupted her mother.

“They were willing to take beatings and whippings and starvation and be locked in boxes and eat cow manure because they loved God so much, and wanted to be pure and holy,” Fluker said.

In 1992, the House of Prayer fell apart when Young was charged with child abuse in the case of 12-year-old Nikki Nickelson. She went on the run, attempting to evade arrest.

Another cult member held Nikki down in a metal tub filled with chemicals and scalding water, while Young scrubbed her. Police said this was Young’s punishment for “improper hygiene.” 

A spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, Art Forgey, said Young used tactics like this to “exonerate the devil from people.” 

After Nikki’s case came to light, Young remained on the run for nearly a decade, and was named to the FBI’s Most Wanted List. 

She was recognized in 2001 and turned in to the police. Forgey said she was found living in attic with relatives in Chicago. 

Young was extradited to Alachua County, and served 192 days in jail. But she remained a free woman for the next 16 years.

In 2016, Fluker set the wheels of justice in motion when she called the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office to turn her mother in for her crimes.

She told police what she remembered, and it launched an investigation into the murder of Emon Harper. This led to police uncovering Young killed Katoyna. 

“It took a lot of courage from a lot of different people to come forward, bring this to light,” Forgey said.

Young’s abuse led to Jackson’s death, which was caused by a seizure.

During the investigation into her death, Katonya’s brother John Neal told police Young had forced the toddler to run in circles, and would beat her if she stopped.

Soon after, the child began having seizures.

Fluker recalled hearing Katonya scream. “Then all of a sudden, the crying stopped… I thought she was dead because they rushed her out, and I just saw her limp body.”

Katonya died after a seizure at Shands Hospital in Gainesville. Police said Young buried her in an unmarked grave.

Young was charged with manslaughter in Katonya’s death.

In 1986, Emon Harper, the child of a teen mother in Chicago, came to the property. Young called him Moses.

Fluker said initially, Young thought he would be the boy she and her husband Jonah Young never had.

“After my dad died, I just remember my mom changing towards him,” Fluker said.

Young starved Emon, beat him, and locked him in closets. A former member found him dead in a laundry basket in a closet. 

Forgey said Young ordered his body to be burned.

Catherine “Cathy” Davidson’s body was never found, but the family believes Young, her stepmother, killed her.

Fluker said that when Emon died, her half-sister (Catherine’s older sister) said, “Oh no, not again.” Her half-sister then revealed that she remembered Young beating the child, and locking her in a closet, where she died.

Young and her then-husband reported Catherine missing, saying she disappeared at a picnic in 1973.  Police believe this was most likely a rouse. 

Several other survivors of Young’s violence have spoken up since her arrest.

John Neal, 8, was Katonya’s brother. In 1985, he was taken to the hospital with a skin infection. He saw the same doctor that had treated Katonya.

John had scars all over his body, and part of his ear was missing. An investigation was launched, but when police went to Young’s house, they didn’t find John there.

Police say there were hidden compartments, and he was likely hidden.

Another case linked to Young involved a man named O.D. Pough, later known as Elder Adam. He was one of the first members of the cult, and he nearly died after Young ordered him to be castrated.

Fluker told First Coast News that Young believed Pough had a “lust demon in him.” He had been ordered not to have sex with his wife; when he broke this rule, he felt like he had to admit it to Young, Fluker said. 

Relatives told investigators that Pough iced his penis and cut it off himself. The infection nearly killed him.

A former cult member, Sabrina Hamburg, told police that Young ordered her to abandon her son Marcos on the street when he was four years old. 

Hamburg said she did as Young said, and left him outside a Catholic Church on a bench. It was the last time she saw her son.

To this day, Marcos hasn’t been found. Hamburg has not given up on searching for the boy, who would now be about 40 years old.

Young pleaded no contest to killing Emon and Katonya. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison at the age of 79.

She only survived in prison for 42 days. She was on oxygen in the ICU before her death, Fluker said.

In 2021, Fluker gave us an inside look at the House of Prayer. You can watch that below, or by clicking here.