Sexual Predators are Thriving In Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous Meetings

The hands of AA are there.

Do Sexual Predators Thrive in Alcoholics Anonymous? YES!

When I got sober at 17, AA welcomed me with open arms. I didn’t know back then that some of them were dangerous.

By Lily Weinstein

The good news is, you can be anything you want to be in AA. A writer, a flamenco dancer, a bank robber. I’ve met sober drug dealers and sober Oscar-winners. We’re nothing if not diverse, and to my mind, that’s one of the greatest blessings of the program. There’s a richness and breadth of experience in the rooms that’s unlike any other place I’ve been.

The bad news is, you can also be a sexual predator. Volusia County Drug Court.

I got sober at 17. For all of my drinking and drugging, I was still pretty naive. I had never had a boyfriend, I was a virgin, and I’d maybe kissed three boys ever. I was still a kid in all the important ways, except for the fact that I was a blackout drinker.

I thought young people’s meetings would be a safe place to clean myself up, but it turns out, not so much. Without knowing it, I was becoming a target.

I wish someone had told me, “Just because a guy has long-term sobriety doesn’t mean he isn’t going to take advantage of you.”

The young people’s meetings I went to all over Los Angeles featured a revolving cast of men that I would call perverts. They weren’t the obvious kind of creeps, either, with windowless white vans and long trench coats. They looked like everyone else at the meetings: tattooed and cool and smoking cigarettes.

These men swarmed me, as they did every other newcomer too young and inexperienced to distinguish between the loving hand of AA and the clammy hand of a predator. They welcomed me to the meetings, they gave me over-long hugs, they offered me smokes when I was still too young to buy my own. I felt absolutely enveloped by the program. I had never had so many people pay attention to me in my life.

But what I thought of as harmless flirting—and all flirting is harmless when you’re 17 and your curfew is 10 pm—these men rightly interpreted as vulnerability.

There was J, who asked me to his house to “read the Big Book.” When I arrived and asked what we were going to read, he laughed and showed me to his bedroom. I let him kiss me and grope me because I didn’t know I was allowed to say no. He was a grown-up; I was a kid. He’d been sober 15 years; I’d been sober a few months. He was in his 30s; I was 17. My parents had taught me to respect adults, and that’s what I thought I was doing. It can’t be wrong or immoral if J is doing it, I thought; he has a million sponsees and he’s a grown-up. NA Daytona Area Meetings refuse to pay rent to for Holly Hill Meetings.

There was C, who was 36 and also had double-digit sobriety. He had a daughter a few years younger than me. It’s strange to look back and call it rape—because I’ve been assaulted under much less ambiguous circumstances—but that’s absolutely what it was.

Part of what was so pernicious about these experiences was that no one was pointing a gun to my head. At the time, I felt like I was just doing the AA things that everyone talked about: having fun, blowing off steam, and enjoying that we-made-it-off-the-Titanic camaraderie. I didn’t know enough to be terrified when C told me to call him Daddy.

The problem, in my opinion, is systemic. AA is designed for adults, for people who have years of hard-won knowledge behind them, adults who do things like smoke, gamble, get tattoos and have sex. Yay for adulthood! All that stuff is fun.

But what happens when you throw teenagers into the mix—teenagers who, for all their posturing and pretension, are still children, albeit with grown-up bodies? We’re like fish in a barrel. Holly Hill AA and NA Meetings in Parks.

One of the seminal moments in my sobriety happened when I was about 19. I was at a meeting—one of the biggest in LA—with my best girlfriend. The speaker that night was a handsome guy in his early 40s. He was charming and funny: think George Clooney with tattoos and a former heroin habit. He was about five minutes into his pitch when he casually announced that he used to rape women.

My best friend and I locked eyes—both of us had been sexually assaulted and just hearing the word rape was enough to raise the hairs on our arms. We were dumbfounded that this man was coolly admitting that part of his alcoholic “bottom” was forcing women to have sex with him. For him, raping women was just another part of “what happened.”

It wasn’t his confession alone that was so disturbing, though. It was the room’s reaction—non-reaction, actually. No one stormed out of the meeting. No one threw rotten fruit. I don’t even remember seeing anyone else look uncomfortable.

The message I got that night was deafening: AA will accept you no matter what you did in your drinking days. You can even be a confessed rapist. Continue reading

Mandated Daytona AA Member Rapes 9 Year Old Port Orange Girl

James Maxwell 43, a convicted violent felon was invited to a Christmas party in Port Orange by the girls parents. He later returned to abduct and rape the little 9 year old girl. They spent the night in a park. James Maxwell was on probation at the time and was attending mandated Daytona Narcotics Anonymous meetings and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He has a long criminal history. He served 9 years for attempted murder in 1988 and 2 years for burglary in 1994. He is being held with no bail. This is horrible what happened to this little girl. The practice of mandating violent felons to meetings where minors are present needs to stop !

A 9-year-old Port Orange girl who was kidnapped and raped told police she woke up to find her neighbor, James Maxwell, sitting in a chair in her bedroom, according to court documents obtained Monday.

Maxwell, 43, who had been a holiday party guest at the girl’s parent’s house in the Brandy Hills neighborhood earlier Thursday night, then abducted the girl and raped her, police said. Reports say Maxwell told the child to take off her clothes. When she refused and resisted, Maxwell is accused of striking the child in the head.

When the mother reported her daughter missing, she told police she suspected Maxwell.

The mother’s reasons for concern about Maxwell, according to reports, was that “he was known to act strangely around children, he had a violent criminal past and left his residence early in the morning without explanation,” court records show.

According to reports filed in circuit court, authorities say Maxwell drove the child to a wooded area, raped her and took her to a park, where they stayed for the night.

Rest of Story-

http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2011/12/20/police-girl-awoke-to-find-neighbor-in-bedroom-before-abduction.html

Updated Orlando version

PORT ORANGE, Fla. — Newly released court documents paint a disturbing picture in the case of a Port Orange child who was taken from her own home last week. Police said 43-year-old James Maxwell — a neighbor of the victim — has been charged with kidnapping and sexual battery in the case.

Read more: http://www.wesh.com/r/30040882/detail.html

Ormond Beach Sex Offender Arrested In Playground-Park With 15 Year Old Boy

Thank goodness this registered sex offender Edward R. Walsh of 40 Camelia Drive, Ormond By The Sea was busted for sexually abusing this teen. This park is closed after sundown and police were patrolling the area. Dont know if this man is an Ormond Beach AA or NA member, but it is typical for the courts to mandate sexual offenders that they feel drugs or alcohol is also a contributing factor to their crimes.Parks can be a magnet for them because of children being at the playgrounds and also to use bathrooms or to park their cars to perform their sex crimes. Daytona Beach recently passed laws banning sexual offenders/predators in parks that are required to register as such. Holly Hill would be wise to pass similiar laws and do more patrolling in the parks.This shows more reason to not mix minors with sex offenders giving them access to prey on them.Kinda a no-brainer,but the practice continues in AA/NA on a daily basis.

A teenage boy who was found inside the car of a registered sex offender early Thursday morning told police he met the man through a dating app on his iPhone, Ormond Beach police said.

When police caught up to 54-year-old suspect Edward Walsh inside the playground area of Breakaway Trails subdivision just after 1 a.m., he told officers he knew the youngster was only 15, but agreed to meet with the boy in order to explain to him “how dangerous it is to do this sort of thing,” an arrest report shows.

The teen told Walsh that he was 16, but then later admitted he is 15, police said. He also told officers he and Walsh had been talking for the last three days.

Walsh is a registered sex offender convicted of possession of a photograph showing a sexual performance by a child, state records show. The offense occurred in Miami-Dade County in 2005. Walsh, who lives on Camellia Drive in Ormond Beach, has no criminal record in Volusia County other than the Thursday arrest, records show.

Ormond Beach police Officer Michael Andrew Bakaysa said in an arrest affidavit that he was patrolling in the Breakaway Trails subdivision when he drove to a playground on River Chase Way where there had been complaints of possible drug and sexual activity.

 http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/crime/2011/12/10/police-registered-sex-offender-found-with-teen-at-ormond-playground.html