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

Man Charged With Pulling Handgun on Two Men Goes to AA Meetings is Given Light Sentence

AA Member Andrew Peterson got the  AA get out of jail card by getting a 6 month suspended sentence after he attended AA meetings prior to sentencing. This is very common for attorneys to tell their clients to go to AA meetings because it will look good to the court. So even before the courts mandate 12 step meetings, attorneys nationwide are encouraging the criminals they represent to go to AA and NA Meetings.

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PARENTS BE CAREFUL LETTING YOUR TEEN ASSOCIATE WITH AA MEMBERS AND THE FELLOWSHIP OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Why should parents be careful about letting their teens associate with AA members from the Santa Clarita Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous?

JR Harris's picture

Courtesy of JR Harris on Mon, 12/31/2012

The Santa Clarita Valley (SVC) Central Office of Alcoholics Anonymous is located at 26951 Ruether Ave., Suite B-6, Santa Clarita, CA 91351 and acts as the central focal point of Alcoholics Anonymous claiming no control over the events they coordinate, promote and advertise in that area of Los Angeles County (http://www.aascv.org/). Alcoholics Anonymous actively recruits from jails and prison for members under their “Correction Committees”, from mental institutions under their “Hospital & Institution” (H&I) committees and from the probation, parole and court systems under their “Cooperation with the Professional Community” (CPC) committees. The members of AA will tell you that the majority of the members do not come from these outlets and through the last survey they published, which only polled around 7,000 members, only 11% of the members came from these outlets. Depending upon outside sources this number is actually between 45-55%.

Why should this be important information for parents to know if they allow their children to go to AA meetings, Al-Anon or Alateen in Santa Clarita Valley (SVC)? The simple reason is because this particular Intergroup co-mingles Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon and Alateen members and if a teen is attacked physically, financially or sexually they will be made to blame for the attack. Use Google and find the physical, financial or sexual attacks in Alcoholics Anonymous and you will find that the Victim is almost always made to be the reason for the attack and the AA Intergroup or group will be called blameless and they will blame your teen. You and your teen will be told repeatedly that your teen was at fault and that you can’t hold the people holding the event responsible for what happened. Here is an example that happens every year that co-mingles all three groups that happened this year, luckily without any incidents that are known and reported. Continue reading