Extracts:
“Each year, the legal system coerces more than 150,000 people to join AA, according to AA’s own membership surveys. Many are drunken drivers ordered to attend a few months of meetings. Others are felons whose records include sexual offenses and domestic violence and who choose AA over longer prison sentences. They mingle with AA’s traditional clientele, ordinary citizens who are voluntarily seeking help with their drinking problems from a group whose main tenets is anonymity. (When telling often-harrowing stories of their alcoholism, the recovering drinkers introduce themselves only by their first names.)
Forced
attendance seems at odds with the original
traditions of the organization, which state that the “only
requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.”
So far, AA has declined to caution members about potentially
dangerous peers or to create separate meetings for convicted
criminals. “We do not discriminate against any prospective AA
member, even if he or she comes to us under pressure from a court, an
employer, or any other agency,” the public information officer at
New York’s central office wrote in a June email. “
“Internal AA documents show that when questioned about the sexual abuse of young women by other members, the organization’s leadership decided in 2009 that it could not do anything to screen potential members. AA, which is a nonprofit, considers each of the nearly 60,000 U.S. AA groups autonomous and responsible for supervising themselves. Board members argued that a group organized around anonymity could do nothing to monitor members without undercutting its basic principles.”
“Sexually exploitative actions toward newcomers in AA have long been detailed in AA’s history; biographies of founder Bill Wilson detail his sexual encounters with attractive female members. One associate of Wilson’s told a biographer that at one point, he and others feared Wilson’s womanizing would derail the group altogether. The actions, which range from inappropriate advances to rape, are known in AA circles as the “13th Step.”
In 2007, stories in the Washington Post and Newsweek described the sexual and emotional abuse of young women at a cultlike AA group in Washington, D.C., called Midtown. The stories included the accounts of young women who said they were pressured to have sex with many AA members, but especially with the group leader, Michael Quinones, who has since died.
Police concluded that no crime had been committed, since the women involved were over the age of 16 and therefore consenting adults.”
AA groups abroad have also confronted the issue of sexual predation among its members. In 2001, Australian AA officials published guidelines for how to bar financial, spiritual, and sexual predators from the group, noting that older members had a “moral obligation” to help protect vulnerable new members – and possibly a legal one. In 2002, 3,400 British AA groups voted to adopt a new code of conduct regarding predatory behavior, concluding, “Failure to challenge and stop inappropriate behaviour gives the offender permission to repeat the offensive behaviour and encourages others to follow suit."
Buoyed by these actions, and prompted by the news accounts, in 2007 a member of the board of Alcoholics Anonymous in the U.S. and Canada drafted a seven-page memo to his colleagues on the board that listed accounts of sexually predatory behavior for which he had direct evidence.
More than two years later, AA’s newly created Subcommittee on Vulnerable Members responded with a one-page letter. Its sentences were lawyerly but the intent was clear. It said: “The subcommittee members agreed that the General Service Board in its position at the bottom of the A.A. service structure would not have a role in setting any behavioral policy or guideline for the A.A. groups or members in regards to protecting any vulnerable member. … The General Service Board has no authority, legal or otherwise, to control or direct the behavior of A.A. members and groups.”
Source: Twelve Steps to Danger: How Alcoholics Anonymous Can Be a Playground for Violence-Prone Members
(our
emphases)
Comment: As we have argued before any AA participation in the “chit” system (court mandated attendance) runs directly contrary to our own traditions (specifically Tradition 6). “Outside organisations” (courts, treatment centres etc) may have a policy of referring people to AA for any number of reasons. That's their business. However it is NOT our business to facilitate this policy by issuing chits as confirmation of attendance. This is not co-operation; this is endorsement. Small wonder that Iain Duncan Smith is rather keen on us. We represent a potential 'dumping ground' for anyone the courts - and for that matter Job Centre staff (potentially) - decide has some kind of alcohol problem. We're cheap (well free actually) and seemingly willing to overlook any kind of conduct (including, it would seem, sexual predation). In fact why bother with prisons any more? Why not just fast track everyone and their brother in our direction – we'll rehabilitate them, and at no extra cost! No more so-called 'life' sentences behind bars. Send them to your local AA meeting instead! (Mind you …. maybe the 'clink' is preferable to some of the cult meetings operating in our midst! A cult sponsor versus a prison officer ….. tough call!).
But sexual predation is not the only risk newcomers face when coming to AA. Abuse manifests itself in many forms and the cult have developed a whole repertoire of their very own including 'suggestions' (cult speak for 'directions') on: sexual conduct (rather ironic given the behaviour of some of their leaders eg. Wayne P – Plymouth Road to Recovery cult group - whose trousers quite inexplicably fall down from time to time!), discontinuing prescribed medication (ie. interfering in the patient/doctor relationship), dress code (formal wear only at meetings), whether to wear a beard or not (seriously!), employment, moving house, religious belief (Roman Catholicism is kosher..... but Jews and Buddhists are out!) .. or to summarise: “Do exactly what your sponsor tells you”. (Apparently the latest edict from Happy Denis (or rather David “Icons” C his sponsor) is that playing the lottery is off! It's not sober behaviour. Now the lottery has been described as many things (including a 'tax on the stupid') but we've never heard it described thus. But with the cult the rules always proliferate – and so does the abuse …ad infinitum .. and ad nauseam!
As the above extract makes clear the General Service Board can do nothing. The General Service Conference can issue guidelines but not implement them. So guess where the buck stops? Yep – looking right back at you!
Cheers
The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
For more on sexual predation see here
