NIFB Pastor Steven Anderson’s Daughter Alleges Home Life Was So Bad: “I remember even as a little kid praying that God would kill me”
Following our recent stories of NIFB pastor Steven Anderson’s son Isaac detailing vicious abuse and beating at the hands of his father, and then his other son John alleging years of abuse by his father against his mom, claiming he used to hit her and whip her with an electrical cord, a third Anderson child has come forward, with Miriam Anderson, 17, claiming that her home life was so bad, that “from the time that I was probably like 11 to 15, I thought about killing myself every day. And I remember even as a little kid praying that God would kill me.”
Anderson is the firebrand KJV-Onlyist from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ. He’s known for his rigorous Independent Fundamentalist Baptist theology, hatred of Calvinism, the infamous “pisseth on a wall” clip, and open glee at the thought of homosexuals being killed; at one point, he had the dubious distinction of being banned from 34 countries, including every English-speaking developed country.
You don’t get to say things like, “If I had a button right here on this pulpit, I could just push this button and every fag would just fall over dead. I would push it until it breaks,” without raising a few eyebrows.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Dead Domain, Miriam recounts: (transcript lightly edited for clarity)
“He was very abusive both to my mom and us as kids. From a very young age I can remember my dad would, he would hit my mom, he would assault her in various ways. To give an example…we always had these bar stools in our kitchen. And I remember as a kid, they were always broken because he would throw them at my mom, he would hit her with them, he would like, hurl them across the room at her head and stuff. And so we probably bought new bar stools every month growing up it was ridiculous.”
She continues:
(My mom) got upset at him because he had used her sewing scissors for something that wasn’t sewing. And she had told him, ‘oh, don’t do that, these are my special sewing scissors’… And I remember my dad broke all of her sewing scissors in half, and he was throwing them at her. And they were like, I remember some hit her in the face and on her arms and stuff. And I remember being a little kid and having to clean up all the broken in half sewing scissors.
It was her job as the oldest daughter to protect the kids from this as best as she could, which was not always possible.
So it was a lot of things like that growing up where it was like, I not only saw my mom abused in a lot of ways, he would beat her with this electrical extension cable, which he also would beat us with at times. Sometimes they would send us out of the house. Sometimes they would be ‘like, okay, go to the backyard,’ and we would all be standing in the backyard, and we could hear my mom in the house screaming and crying.
…then sometimes he would just be angry and he wouldn’t even care to…send us away, so I would have to take my siblings…you know, and put them in the other room and try to distract them and read them a story or something, but it was, you know, it’s kind of hard to distract from that kind of thing.
Miriam says that this sort of behavior from her parents, both mom and dad, led her into a serious depression, overwhelmed by the responsibilities.
It’s kind of like, especially growing up as the oldest daughter, right? There was all this responsibility put on me because my older brothers, the mentality was, well, they’re boys, so they’re not gonna grow up and be homemakers or whatever. So they weren’t expected to do like cooking and cleaning and childcare as much. And so growing up it was like there was kind of all this responsibility put on me where I have to cook and I have to clean and I have to take care of kids. And even when I was like seven, eight, nine, ten, I was like cooking, I was cleaning, I was taking care of little kids.
And especially since my parents were constantly in this kind of they like, they would start fighting and it’s like they aren’t really paying attention to anything but their fight. So then, you know, kids still have to be fed and they still have to be taken care of and someone still has to put them to nap and clean up the house.
This became so overwhelming, to the point that she wished for death even as a child
I was constantly feeling like…I’m responsible for my parents’ marriage, and I’m the reason why everything’s going wrong, and I have to make dinner, and I have to take care of the little kids, and I have to make sure that they don’t know what dad’s doing to mom in the other room.
..And when I got to be a teenager, I kind of decided that the second I turned 18, I was out of there. And I was going to move out the day I turned 18. And it was a part of me that was a little bit conflicted because I didn’t like the idea of leaving my siblings in that situation. But at the same time, I kind of had realized that I was reaching a breaking point personally because I was so unhealthy just being in that environment. I would constantly be physically sick from crying and not be able to keep food down, and I would lose my appetite for days on end.
I had like a bunch of nervous behaviors where I would constantly be chewing my fingernails and ripping open my cuticles to the point where my hands were completely ripped apart. My hands were always super bloody and my mom made fun of me for this a ton of course.
I was also very depressed and I thought about suicide constantly for years on end. From the time that I was probably like 11 to 15 I thought about killing myself like every day. And I remember even as a little kid like praying that God would like kill me because I just did not want to be around anymore.
At this point, Miriam is not living at home and does not want ever to go back. Anderson doesn’t know exactly where she is, but has accused his brother Clint of “stealing her” and “abducting her” from him because he last saw her living at his house in another state and is demanding that she come back. (She had gone to visit her cousins and their family for summer vacation and never came back)
He released a video claiming that Clint and his wife have poisoned her mind against him, because prior to her leaving, he and his daughter were “good buddies” and had a “really good relationship.”
That whole post just what was contained in the first 20 minutes of the interview. See the whole thing below:
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You know, it wouldn’t surprise me at all at this point if Steven will now come “out of the closet” or some shit like that. In my 52 years of living, NOTHING surprises/shocks me any longer in regards to what people do. Human beings are an extremely wicked species! God was truly justified when he flooded the entire Earth back in the book of Genesis in the Bible.
That’s an interesting point. I’ve known and known of people in the past who had vehement hatred of homosexuals and then after x period of time (seems like after the wife leaves) they come out as a homosexual. Whether he is or isn’t I hope he goes to jail for a long, long time.
One can only hope that happens! If nothing else, I hope all this FINALLY prompts CPS to take the whole matter with P̶a̶s̶t̶o̶r̶ Steven Anderson and his family with the seriousness that it deserves.
@Les watch your language. It’s pathetic and is totally unfit for a Christian, which I assume you claim to be since you are commenting here.
Well, the Bible(KJV 1611) has the word ‘piss’ in it, so it’s not a far stretch to say that ‘shit’ is acceptable as well.
Evil scumbag.
Just more fruits of the IFB’s pernicious influence.
This has nothing to do with him being IFB. Independent Fundamental Baptists don’t have any centralized governing body like the SBC or PCUSA. Each church stands on its own (thus independent) and only associates with select sister churches of their choosing that they wish to collaborate with in various ministries. Only a small number of IFB churches associate themselves with this narcissistic abusive lunatic. Most of us have enough sense to give him a hard pass.
True. It’s unfortunate Steve Anderson claims to be an IFB because his doctrine hardly reflects their beliefs. Anderson gives bad people the ability to slander and lump together good churches with his bad fruit.