Seeking Recovery, Finding Confusion

After hearing about sexual relationships inside Midtown, Clancy Imislund, managing director of Midnight Mission, a Los Angeles nonprofit 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 anymore. 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.