Hurting Within the Rooms of Recovery

The video can be viewed here at: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-13th-step
or at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-_xPU3KC5E
if the vid is not showing up here.

The video is titled "The 13th Step" and a woman named Monica Richardson made it.  She and some women in California are on a mission to make the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous safer.  Or at least to spread awareness of several issues surrounding the rooms.

Those issues are people and the people in particular are predators.  Predators operate by looking for a vulnerability in their mark or vic, and then using manipulation to ease their way in.  So yes, women [and I suspect a few men but the men aren't talking yet] do get raped by predators that they have met in the twelve step rooms of recovery.  [I have direct knowledge of one such woman who was raped by someone she met at a meeting].  Yes, people do get robbed, beaten, taken advantage of financially, and murdered by others who they got acquainted with in the rooms.  People in the rooms commit armed house robberies.  These things happen.  I know they happen because I've known people [as in "more than one person"] that these things have happened to.  No murder vics in my direct knowledge but the other stuff yes.

Monica approached the A.A. General Services Office in New York City when she began receiving copious e-mails from women who were raped by other members of A.A.  But the A.A. Trad "A.A. has no opinion on outside issues..." was presented to her as an excuse for not doing anything about it.  So Monica said screw this shit and left A.A.  She currently has thirty years or so of continuous sobriety.

The trouble with citing a tradition as a "reason" for non-action is that this issue is not an "outside" issue.  It is very much an inside issue-- one that very few people have dared to brooch.  In typical A.A. fashion, a sponsor who does not know any better will ask the sponsee, "What part did you play in this?"  This question really misses the mark.

To those who have been fortunate enough to survive sexual assaults, beatings, and other such things which were perpetrated by people that they've met in recovery meetings, I can say this:  You did not deserve it.  You did nothing to make this happen to you.  You are blameless.  And, I believe you.  If you find that you cannot return to 12-step meetings but you wish to get support for your continued abstinence, I encourage you to check out alternative programs such as the ones listed in the links here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-_xPU3KC5E under the first section labeled "Non-cult Pro-Recovery."

                                radical sapphoq