“Murky going's on in Derbyshire” etc etc

Well the murk gets thicker and thicker and with not a sign of daylight anywhere!

But:

“Dear Fellas

As a previous regular attendee of the Derby City Meetings, the suggestion that “personal abuse, interference with prescribed medication, and that the Derby City group promotes itself to the detriment of other groups in the area” are absolutely and completely true.

At just about every meeting they describe other meetings in the area as being “knitting circle”, “god bothering” and/or “useless” and always claimed that they had “the only decent and sustained sobriety for at least a 25 mile radius”. I was personally told by a member of the meeting who was sponsoring me at the time that if I took a specific medication prescribed by my GP for anxiety (Citalopram) I could “find a new sponsor” and would “no-longer be tolerated at the meetings”. I was told that the meeting would not tolerate attendees taking any “mind altering substances” including those prescribed by doctors.

I hope this helps.

…....”

(our edit)

However – and to summarise (and moreover demonstrably):

Derbyshire Intergroup website (still semi-detached from the official AA website) continues to carry a Step Four template derived (so we are informed) from a “Back to Basics” source (a nonprofit outside organisation) and in contravention of the guidelines.

For their part the Derby City meetings have set up their own website (under a Midland Region header) where it is claimed:

“Derby City Centre Alcoholics Anonymous meetings offer people wanting to get and stay sober a proven success story.

Derby AA's focussed groups will provide the best help possible - our meetings are far and away the most successful in the East Midlands.”

This clearly constitutes an attempt to “promote” the group in competition with other groups in the East Midlands area - and for which “success” no evidence is provided. This too constitutes a fundamental breach of AA guidelines.

Finally the Derby City groups appear in a listing entitled “Worldwide Agnostic A.A. Meetings” thereby breaching yet another tradition relating to non-affiliation.


Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS Our thanks to our correspondents

Derby City/Derbyshire IG – the missives fly thick and fast … and rather flimsily!

We've received various communications now on the subject of the ““Murky goings-on in Derbyshire” involving the current wrangle between some of the Derby City meetings and the respective intergroup. What we have so far managed to conclude from these is someone somewhere is telling rather large 'porky pies'! To date we haven't decided conclusively who is but when we do then you can be quite sure that the hammer will fall!

The latest development in this saga however relates to a letter of complaint (purportedly) sent by Derbyshire NHS to the Intergroup:

“The contents of the letter is clear, alcoholic service users of the Crisis team within Derbyshire have experienced extremely unhelpful and very abusive behaviour at the aforementioned group [Derby City] and the NHS are advising intergroup that they will no longer be recommending that their service users go to this meeting.”

But in response to a query from the Derby City meetings Derbyshire NHS (Derby Crisis Intervention Team) responded thus (allegedly):

“Letter from Mental Health Crisis Team boss [Richard Morrow]

Hi …..,

Thank you for raising this with me earlier and the further information. I have made some further enquiries today following on from our conversation earlier.

I am going to write a letter to the Intergroup PO Box address requesting that someone contact me in relation to the letter that has reportedly being sent from the team.

I will be clearly stating that to my knowledge no communication has been sent on behalf of the service and that any comments received should not be considered the representative view of the Crisis Team or Derbyshire Healthcare Foundation Trust and should be disregarded.

I will further request that a copy be made available to me so that I can raise with any potential source the upset and disharmony that this can cause.

I will send a copy to you via e-mail which you are free to retain and use as you see fit.

I would just like to add that if a member of my team has played any part in the difficulties you and your group are currently experiencing then you have my unreserved apology.

Any comments of this nature are unsolicited and in my opinion inappropriate and do not reflect the opinions of myself, my team or indeed Derbyshire Healthcare Foundation Trust.

Sincerest regards,

Derby City and County South CRHTT”

(It should be noted that in neither instance were original copies of the above communications provided hence the use of the terms “purportedly” and “allegedly”)

Furthermore an allegation has been made that the General Service Office (York) instigated a series of “mystery calls to the [local] helpline” and that on the basis of these “confirmed the unsuitability of our members [ie. of Derby City group] for service”.

Apparently when GSO was queried about this by a representative of the Derby City group they provided the following reply (or as reported):

“The general secretary tell me that GSO have in fact never so much as received a complaint about us in 15 years, let alone opened a QA [Quality Assurance] department.......GSO have promised me a letter commenting on claims made as to their actions in this matter.”

In connection with the (alleged) suspension of Derby City group members from participation in the telephone responders' service the following policy statement applies (as set out by Derbyshire Intergroup):

"The group nominates the following members who are being sponsored into telephone service, either as a responder (permanent or reserve) and/or a 12 Stepper. All people listed must be regular attenders of THIS group (that means they attend this group most weeks). By putting their names on the form, the group is saying that they believe these people are able to carry the message of recovery to newcomers under the guidelines, and that they are reliable in performing service."

and:

“The forms are available via DIG and NLIG; so by definition any group in contact with their appropriate area intergroup has access to the form and therefore into the formal service mechanism. There are no rules, written or otherwise, that exclude any specific group or members from formal service. A group would simply need to attend intergroup to collect a form, complete it and return it. The accusation that "the cult dupe "in charge of" the helpline is driving this campaign. He has decreed that no-one who attends our meeting is ever to be allowed to do helpline or 12-step work under any circumstances" is simply untrue.”

and so it continues...... so much for AA unity!

But it would seem that we're not the only ones who are taking an interest in what precisely is going on in Derbyshire AA. We've recently been contacted by a reporter from the Derby Telegraph as follows:

“Hi there,

I am a reporter at the Derby Telegraph. I have just read the posting http://aacultwatch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/murky-goings-on-in-derbyshire-another.html with interest.

If you could keep in touch regarding anyone that may come forward with any information regarding AA meetings in the area would it be possible to see if they would be willing to come forward, anonymously if that is how they feel most comfortable, to talk about their experiences.

Thanks very much and hope to hear from you soon.”

Comment: The above represents the shape of things to come. If Alcoholics Anonymous is unwilling to put its house in order (and this sooner rather than later!) then inevitably others will take action! If we are unable to provide a safe environment for newcomers (and here we are not referring solely to the situation in Derbyshire but nationally) then there can be no other outcome than the referring agencies will discontinue recommending us to their clients and patients. If we cannot meet the absolute minimum standards of care and respect for those who come to us for help then we really don't deserve the trust of the society within which we operate. We continue to receive reports concerning vulnerable members who have committed suicide because of pressure placed upon them to desist the use of prescribed medication (the most recent in the Bournemouth area). The controlling, intrusive and abusive 'sponsorship' styles characteristic of the cult members who operate within AA are still very much in evidence. These practices simply extend licence to those 'control freaks/narcissists' who wish to 'play God' whilst simultaneously rendering their sponsees (or rather 'victims') impotent, and even regressed into an almost infantile state of dependency on their human 'Higher Power'. These departures from AA principles are a blight on the fellowship and if left unchecked will lead without doubt to its dissolution.

And where does the responsibility for all this rest? Take a look in the mirror …..

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS Our usual thanks to our various correspondents

Derbyshire Intergroup minutes – an interesting read!

Comment: This is what happens when the traditions are ignored! Chaos!

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS More to follow! Our usual thanks to our correspondent

“Murky goings-on in Derbyshire” - another perspective (in brief)

We have received further allegations with reference to the Derby City meetings. These include forms of personal abuse, interference with prescribed medication, and that the Derby City group promotes itself to the detriment of other groups in the area. Our source requested that the details not be published on the site. We would however be interested to hear from any members who can provide any further (publishable) evidence to support (or rebut) these allegations (preferably in the form of personal testimony and/or documentary evidence).

Over to you

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS We've recently checked out the AA GB website – the ONLY official website for AA in the country. For at least FOUR days now the Starter Pack section of the site (which carries links to the relevant pamphlets) has been inoperative. On clicking the links the message: “The system cannot find the path specified.” is displayed. What this means is that there is nothing there! Apparently the webmasters are currently substituting pdf links for html links for documents throughout the site but have failed to do so for this section. The documents themselves are available (if you look closely) under the Members' Area - then under Service - THEN under Document Library - and THEN under Newcomers starter pack Pdfs – not exactly easily accessible! We estimate it would take about 5 minutes to rectify the problem! So what's going on?

PPS The Share section of the same website contains the following spelling error: “possitive” for “positive”. Remember this website is: “created and maintained by The General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous (Great Britain) Ltd. through The General Service Office of Great Britain.”

Comment: This is the public face of Alcoholics Anonymous (Great Britain) on the web! Use a spell check!

“Murky goings-on in Derbyshire” continued.....

A number of allegations have been levelled at the Derby City meetings (as reported by a member from that group) as follows:

“That a complaint had been received from some local mental health team that one of their punters had come to our meeting, and drank that night, and that we had somehow caused this. We cannot recall a newcomer like the one supposedly involved in this incident, and have no way of verifying if a complaint was ever made.

That our meeting was not a proper AA meeting because we do not close the meeting with the serenity prayer.

That we are in some way misogynistic, as evidenced by the fact that few women attend.

We consider these allegations to be not even wrong. We are not misogynistic, are not required to pray, and are not responsible for whether a newcomer drinks or not.

…........

The local IG would like us to be compelled to join, and to accept their authority over us. Their clearly and repeatedly expressed wish is to be able to tell us how to run our meeting and how to do 12-step work. They would like to be able to define an AA meeting as one proceeding along the lines described on their website, to say that anything else is not a proper AA meeting, and to prevent anyone at such a "rebel" meeting from doing AA service.

It only seems odd that we were not invited to comment on allegations if one assumes that we have a functional IG. As an example of where things are locally, I will tell you about how we all came to barred from 12-step service: 

…....  was a helpline responder sponsored onto the helpline by our meeting. He received a call from a vulnerable female who expressed concern that she had heard that women like her were targeted by sexual predators in AA, and that she was thinking of going to a meeting in Derby at which ….... knew there were many such predators. He suggested to her that she might wish to go elsewhere as the meeting she was proposing to go to had a problem of the sort she was concerned about. …..... subsequently received a call from the then TLO, who wished to interrogate him about the call without being willing to disclose to him what allegations had been made. Having been forced to defend himself against allegations which could not be disclosed to him the interview with him was discussed in camera in both IG and region based solely on the account of this hostile interviewer. After all of this, he was allowed to stay on the helpline, but a little while later, everyone who attended the meeting was barred from the helpline and 12-step work on the grounds of ….. being convicted in his absence, and without disclosure of the charges of something so terrible that no-one is permitted to know what it is. You may agree or disagree with …...'s actions, but the concept of natural justice is clearly lacking here. It is against this background that the IG becoming a kangaroo court for meetings which have never acknowledged its legitimacy should be understood.

I do not have information on all of the meetings where the IG minutes have been discussed, and used as the basis for making a petition to York, but I believe that it was defeated at Belper, and passed by a majority at Kimberley and Ripley. Away from the Nottingham/Derby border where the cults dominate, I am not sure it has been discussed in a group conscience at all. Despite dissent in all forums where it has been discussed, a clear defeat in at least one, and a likelihood that it will not be discussed at all in meetings away from the cult zone, I predict that it will be taken as carried on the grounds that the majority of people in the small number of meetings in which it was discussed.

We will once again be struck from the list of meetings, and York will be petitioned. Whilst I know that York will not act on their petition, they can easily remove us from the local where to find and prevent helpline references to us. Many of the most aggressive meetings already scribble out out our entries on the where to find card, tell people we have closed, and that we have left AA.

Whilst it is true that substantial unanimity is not essential, it is my understanding from past group Step Tens that it is an ideal to be aimed for. The need to make decisions means that debate cannot proceed endlessly, but a quote from your own site demonstrates my point here perfectly:

"All service bodies are reminded that AA is an inclusive fellowship. Adherence to AA Traditions, concepts and warranties ensures inclusivity. This committee found that strained relations between some groups and Intergroups can inhibit the effectiveness of our primary purpose. The principles of Unity, right of participation, that minority opinion must be heard and that no service body has the authority to take punitive action were emphasised to help resolve some of the difficulties encountered."

We have no right of participation, and punitive action is being taken against us. That the IG does not have the legitimate authority to do so does not stop them from acting ultra vires. It merely stops us from calling in a supervisory level of organisation to stop them.

As far as acting at IG level to call ….... to account, the IG has a very small and highly unrepresentative membership, and does not allow those who disagree with it to even attend, let alone vote. Members of CALYX and Visions have held those of its officerships which are filled since its inception, and some of the posts have had a single incumbent during that time. We applied to join all three local IGs and were turned down on unity grounds. We have been told that the only way we will be allowed to join is if we change our conscience to one more to their liking. I can see you are having difficulty understanding how an IG can so lose its way, but it is so. Investigate the matter for yourselves.


Regards
…....... “

(our edits)

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

Coming soon: Yet another perspective

Murky goings-on in Derbyshire

A brief summary

(and for more background simply type Derbyshire into the Google search box located at the top of our blog)

For some time there has been an ongoing dispute between Derbyshire IG (or parts of it) and a number of meetings in Derby City with various allegations being levelled at the latter (based at the Sisters of Mercy Convent, Bridge Gate, Derby, and running on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays). These meetings place some emphasis on the fact that they are “non-religious” (which in itself is hardly controversial) but otherwise appear to be run in accordance with the guidelines (although we would question their assertion on the meetings' success rates included on their website). For a period they were removed from the local Where to Find but subsequently reinstated (at the request of GSO York apparently). Interestingly Derbyshire IG itself has had its inclusion on the national website suspended because the IG uses Google Maps as an aid to meeting location. This has been deemed (by someone somewhere) as a contravention of the traditions (presumably relating to non-affiliation). (This latter instance illustrates the confusion that currently exists within the General Service Conference when it comes to AA's relationship with the internet. For example Derbyshire IG is denied a presence on the official AA website on the above grounds and yet the same website carries a link to the Plymouth Road to Recovery (cult) group which regularly breaks the same guideline - and many others - at every opportunity). Moreover, and in our view more seriously, the IG website carries a template produced by (according to the IG itself) the Back to Basics movement (an outside organisation based in the US with a not-for-profit tax status). The information included within this template mostly relates to the book Alcoholics Anonymous but with a commentary which clearly does not.

The latest communication we have received from a representative of the above meetings is as follows:

“Thanks for your highlighting of the problems with the Derbyshire IG in the past - I have an update for you

The cultists are now going around the local meetings holding a referendum to remove us from the list of local meetings and to petition York to have us taken off the national list of meetings, after apparently having had a kangaroo court at the last IG meeting in which we were convicted in our absence of a number of supposed crimes. As ever there was no pretence of natural justice. We were not invited to defend ourselves against these charges, and no evidence was offered to back them. Neither was the AA tradition of substantial unanimity being followed. The IG is telling groups that the motion to expel us was carried at IG, despite their being significant dissent at the IG. There is also dissent in the meetings where the issue is being discussed, and counted as passed based on a majority show of hands. [this however is the standard basis for voting – a simple majority usually suffices]

…......, the cult dupe "in charge of" the helpline is driving this campaign. He has decreed that no-one who attends our meeting is ever to be allowed to do helpline or 12-step work under any circumstances, despite the helpline now having half of its slots going empty, and several of the the few people on the helpline doing three or four shifts each.

…..... is a sad case, who got sober in our meeting and went to Milton Keynes after a year with his job. Though he went there an atheist, he came back a covert cultist, which we only found out when we caught him using cult literature with a Buddhist sponsee. Now he is acting as a sort of apostate, determined to stamp out the very meeting which got him sober.”

(our edits)

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS We have previously invited Derbyshire Intergroup to comment or respond on any of these issues. None was forthcoming

PPS Our usual thanks to our correspondent

More from Derbyshire....and Mid-Trent....and Notts....and Leicester... the plot thickens!

“They [Derbyshire intergroup] had us [Derby City groups] thrown off the local list of meetings twice, had every member of our meetings removed from service twice, and persuaded all three local intergroup to deny us membership. Their sponsees and those influenced by them reliably neglected to mention the existence of our group to helpline callers even when we were allowed on the list.

The intergroup situation is essentially a sham. The old East Midlands Intergroup was felt to be too large, and was dominated by a few Notts old-timers, so …..... created The Mid-Trent and Derbyshire Intergroups, which are still run by acolytes of those same Notts old-timers …....... with the cultists in tow or leading on occasion. Mid-Trent IG failed in fairly short order, and Derbyshire IG is just a fig-leaf for the Notts old-timers (or "senior AAs" as they like to be called) continuing to run things. They would rather have the cultists at the helm than a truly independent IG. We showed the senior AAs the literature we sent you and they did nothing, then allowed the cultists to throw us off. Leicester simply ignores the Intergroup, "Notts and Leicester IG" is only so called because Leicester can't even be bothered to turn up to announce that they are leaving.

I can give a lot more detail, but that's the essential position. When we were denied IG membership,we were told by ….. members (acting as IG emissaries) that all three IGs had had to deny us membership as a "unity issue". That this was the basis on which we are not in the IG makes our expulsion from service on the grounds of our non-membership all the more unreasonable.

In terms of documentary evidence, they have not in the past minuted any decision to throw us off, and have only gone in writing about the decision at all on this occasion, in the letter they sent to us."

Comment: We did contact Derbyshire IG to get their side of the story – the silence is still quite deafening!

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

(our usual thanks to this contributor)

Dissent in Derby – what exactly is going on in this intergroup?

We have received recent contacts from members within this intergroup including the following:

“Whilst we may not agree with you in every detail of your approach, we are happy to offer you information and assistance to try to support the achievement of our common goal, an AA of genuinely autonomous and effective meetings.

As well as their base in Long Eaton, the Derby Wednesday and Sunday "Friends Meeting House" meetings were taken over by the cultists around a year ago, and they also now run a number of "informal meetings" in Derby and Long Eaton. These "informal meetings" do not appear on the GSO list, and are run by the cult as explicitly and exclusively Christian affairs with no pretence of following AA tradition.

You can see confirmation of what I am telling you on the intergroup website here. Look at the meeting minutes for confirmation of their promotion of "informal meetings" [apparently this entry has now been removed from the intergroup website], their version of step 4 worksheets, and the use of a 1940's version of "questions and answers on sponsorship".

Bill is the name of their local leader. He is based in Long Eaton. His firmest follower is Geraldine, who has infiltrated the local Derbyshire intergroup, along with a number of other cultists including her soon to be ex-husband Jez.

The local intergroups under the influence of the cult removed every member of our groups [Derby City centre] from the 12-step list, and responders rota a couple of weeks ago.

Regards

…..”

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

(our usual thanks to this contributor)