“Midtown Group: AA
Group Leads Members Away from Traditions
When Kristen was 17
and drinking out of control, her psychologist referred her to an Alcoholics
Anonymous group that specialized in helping the youngest drinkers. In the
Midtown Group, members and outsiders agree, young people could find new friends,
constant fellowship, daily meetings, summer-long beach parties, and a
charismatic leader who would steer them through sobriety.
But according to more
than a dozen young people who structured their lives around the group, the
unusual adaptation of AA that Michael Quinones created from his home in Bethesda
became a confusing blend of comfort and crisis. They described a rigidly insular
world of group homes and socializing, in which older men had sex with teenage
girls, ties to family and friends were severed or strained, and the most
vulnerable of alcoholics, some suffering from emotional problems, were
encouraged to stop taking prescribed medications.
Kristen, now 26, said
that for eight years, she was "passed along" from one middle-aged male leader of
Midtown to another. She said her sponsor urged her to have sex with Quinones --
widely known as Mike Q. -- as a way to solidify her sobriety and spiritual
revival. Kristen, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used in
keeping with AA traditions, also recalled helping to persuade other teenage
girls to sleep with older men in the group.
"I pimped my sponsees
out to sponsors," she said, referring to the AA members who agree to watch over
a fellow member's sobriety. "I encouraged them to sleep with their sponsors
because I really believed that this would help with their sobriety."
Rianne McNair, who
left Midtown in 2005 after three years in the group, said, "Several of my
friends had sex with Mike Q. One of my friends went to the beach house, and her
sponsor assigned her to Mike Q.'s bedroom. The younger girls looked up to these
guys; Mike is idolized, like, 'I got invited to Mike Q.'s house for dinner
tonight. Can you believe it?' "
Midtown, also known
as the Q Group after its leader, has expanded steadily to about 400 members
since Quinones assumed leadership in the 1980s, but appears to be reaching a
turning point. Quinones, a 63-year-old real estate agent who grew up in
Baltimore and served in the Army in Vietnam, is fighting an advanced case of
prostate cancer, according to group members, friends and relatives. He did not
respond to repeated requests for comment.
In response to
questions raised by some parents, therapists and churches where Midtown held
meetings, the group this spring issued a statement denying improper acts. "We
cannot be all things to all people . . . " the statement said. "We do not
condone underage sex. While we are not the arbiter of other people's sex
conduct, underage sex is illegal and our experience shows that it can endanger
your sobriety.
"We cannot tell you
what to do with regard to taking medications such as anti-depressants,
anti-psychotics, etc. While we have no opinion of medication in general, based
on our personal experience, many members of the Midtown Group do not sponsor
people who take mood-altering medication."
Outside Quinones's
house, young Midtown members who often hang out around the front steps declined
to talk to a reporter. A senior member of the group, who is close to Quinones
and who spoke on condition he not be named because of AA's tradition of
anonymity, said, "Anyone who has anything positive to say about the group is
going to respect AA's policy of dignified silence in the media."
Montgomery County
police said they are looking into allegations of underage sexual relations. But
they said the women who have come forward have told of relationships that took
place when they were 16 or 17; Maryland law considers women 15 and younger to be
underage. Many of the allegations were aired in Montgomery County District Court
in a domestic relations civil suit involving a member of the group.
"We interviewed 15 to
20 people, and they all said he's doing it. But it was all, 'It wasn't me,' "
said Montgomery police Sgt. Ron Collins of the department's pedophile section.
"Nobody's come forward with anything we could charge him with. The girls can be
16 or 17, and it's legal."
Controlled by
Leaders
Over eight decades,
Alcoholics Anonymous, a pioneer in the support-group model of treatment, has
grown to attract about 2 million members in more than 100,000 groups.
Despite a stellar
reputation and worldwide brand, it has never been more than a set of bedrock
traditions. It has no firm hierarchy, no official regulations, and exercises no
oversight of individual groups. Disgruntled former Midtown members discovered
this in recent months when they tried to get the central AA office in New York
to condemn Midtown's tactics and departures from the traditions, including a
highly unusual practice of assigning older men to sponsor young
women.
"The assumption since
our founding was that groups that did not follow the traditions and concepts
would fall away," said a staff member at AA's General Service Office, who spoke
on condition of anonymity "because we are all alcoholics, and that is our
policy."
The main office does
offer "strong suggestions" for how groups should operate, including how to pair
each member with a sponsor who shares confidences and helps the member stay
sober. AA recommends that "it's best if a man sponsors a man and a woman
sponsors a woman, so that there are not outside distractions," the staffer
said.
In Midtown, Quinones
and several friends, who are also long-time AA members, have taken on leadership
roles that go well beyond the typical part played by organizers of meetings,
according to local therapists, ministers and AA members. AA tradition suggests
that "our leaders are but trusted servants," the New York staffer said. "They do
not govern."
Quinones and other
senior members have not only run two dozen weekly meetings across the Washington
region but also organized ski trips and summer beach parties, helped young
members find jobs at stores such as Nordstrom and the old Hecht's, and
encouraged young members to live together in group houses in Gaithersburg,
Rockville and Bethesda, members and ex-members said.
"It's like a
prepackaged community," said David, 26, a former Midtown member who initially
adored the group but now is highly critical of it. "You're thinking, okay, maybe
I can stay sober for the rest of my life, but how do I have fun? I went to a
different group, and it was 50-year-old men who went bowling on Tuesdays. That
wasn't going to do it for me. At Midtown, everything is there for you. Here are
your women, here are your dances every weekend, ski trip every
March."
But some former
members describe the Midtown life as overwhelmingly controlling. McNair said she
was pressured to pay $950 for a share in a three-bedroom summer house in which
20 Midtown members slept, most of them on air mattresses on the floor. Kristen
described being pressed to pay $1,200 for a summer house share in which she
slept on the floor.
Some therapists who
used to refer young people to Midtown and some pastors whose churches have
hosted Midtown meetings say they have heard of too many disturbing practices to
maintain a relationship with the group.
Ellen Dye, a clinical
psychologist in Rockville, said two of her clients "suffered significant harm as
a result of their involvement with Mike Q. and his followers." One young woman
said she was assigned a boyfriend and encouraged to go off her antidepressants
and cut off contact with Dye, the psychologist said.
Without her
medication, the woman became acutely suicidal and was hospitalized, Dye said.
When Midtown members learned that the woman was back on medication, she was
ostracized and "was considered to have relapsed," Dye said.
That young woman told
The Washington Post that her sponsor in Midtown refused to continue as her
adviser if the woman kept taking prescription medications. The sponsor also
directed her to stop seeing a therapist " 'because you need one clear voice --
your sponsor's,' " the woman said.
"These are very needy
people -- they're young people who can be looking for a parent figure," Dye
said. "Mike Q. plays that role. Midtown is doctrinaire and controlling. It's
totally against the 'Big Book,' " the written traditions that guide AA groups.
Now, Dye said, she warns clients and colleagues about Midtown and even has
become reluctant to refer clients to any AA group.
After hearing about
sexual relationships inside Midtown, Clancy Imislund, managing director of
Midnight Mission, a Los Angeles non-profit group that serves the homeless, said
he asked senior Midtown members about the allegations and found that "there
probably have been some excesses, but they have helped more sober alcoholics in
Washington than any other group by far."
Imislund, who speaks
frequently to AA groups across the country, said he concluded that if sexual
relations between older men and young girls "ever did take place, it's not
taking place now. It had been an issue, but wherever you have a lot of young,
neurotic people, they're going to cling to each other."
Although Imislund
portrayed parents of young people in Midtown as "immensely grateful that this
group has managed to get their children sober when no one else could," other
parents said they were appalled to see the group draw children away from their
families.
Barred From Some
Churches
Cathy McCleskey
became alarmed after hearing her daughter and other young people in Midtown talk
about one practice after another that would not occur in most AA groups: They
described being told by Midtown's leaders to stop taking medication prescribed
by a psychiatrist, being permitted to visit family only in the company of other
Midtown members and regularly cleaning Mike Q.'s house, mowing his lawn and
doing his laundry. Her daughter had a male sponsor.
"On one hand, she was
sober for nine months, and I was so glad that I thought, whatever's happening
with this group is fine by me," McCleskey said. "But then, after about a year in
Midtown, I got a call that she was in a mental hospital." McCleskey said her
daughter remained there for four weeks, depressed and suicidal. The daughter is
now out of Midtown and faring well.
McCleskey said she
tried to get AA's local coordinating body to look into allegations against
Midtown but was told that each group governs itself.
Parents and former
members, armed with a recent Newsweek article on the control Midtown exerts over
young alcoholics, approached several area churches this summer to ask them to
bar the group from meeting at their facilities. A meeting held on Sunday
evenings for nearly two decades at the Church of the Pilgrims near Dupont Circle
left the church this year after ex-Midtown members provided "detailed and
credible allegations," said the Rev. Ashley Goff, director of Christian
education at the church. Midtown leaders told pastors they were being criticized
unfairly by "disgruntled people who couldn't keep their act together," Goff
recalled.
Even though some
church members said Midtown had saved them from addiction, church leaders
concluded that "this group crossed boundaries in very strong ways," Goff said.
"Clearly, they were targeting young women who were in their first rehab program
-- the most vulnerable people."
Informed that the
church was "about to make a decision about asking them to leave," Goff said,
"Midtown came to us and said, 'Oh, our group's gotten too big, and we're going
to leave.' "
Goff added: "Our
fellowship hall is huge."
At St. Mark
Presbyterian Church in Rockville -- the site of one of 20 or so weekly Midtown
meetings across the region -- the Rev. Roy W. Howard said that after Midtown
leaders refused "to give me an explanation of the allegations against them, I
decided to ask them not to meet" at the church any more. St. Mark still provides
facilities for six of the hundreds of Washington area AA groups not connected
with Midtown.
And at St. Patrick's
Episcopal Church in Northwest Washington, the Rev. Elizabeth S. McWhorter told
congregants in May that although the allegations against Midtown "would have
been difficult to prove or disprove," the group "will not be returning to St.
Patrick's."
But at United Church
of Christ in Bethesda, the Rev. Allison Smith said she concluded that "there was
really no bite behind the charges," so "we've decided not to ask them to leave."
After meeting with Midtown leaders, Smith said that "maybe there were some
incidents of an older male taking advantage of a younger woman who was in
recovery, and that's terrible. But was it a systemic policy? We really haven't
found anything to back up those charges at the group that meets
here."
When Kristen left
Midtown, she was utterly alone. "Everyone in my cellphone was Midtown," she
said. "I was 24, and I knew literally nobody. I had cut off my ties with my
family at the direction of my sponsor."
"Eight years of my
life was wasted," Kristen said.”
©Washington Post, By
Marc Fisher July 22, 2007
Comment: Quinones is
now dead.
The Fellas
(Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
PS Our thanks to our
correspondent who pointed out this article
