| Karla Brada Mendez thought that she was getting a second chance when she started going to AA meetings. Instead she met Eric Allen Earle, an AA old-timer with a violent past.
Each year, the legal system coerces more than 150,000 people to join AA, according to AA s own membership surveys. Many are drunken drivers ordered to attend a few months of meetings. Others are felons whose records include sexual offenses and domestic violence and who choose AA over longer prison sentences. They mingle with AA s traditional clientele, ordinary citizens who are voluntarily seeking help with their drinking problems from a group whose main tenets is anonymity. Forced attendance seems at odds with the original traditions of the organization, which state that the "only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. So far, AA has declined to caution members about potentially dangerous peers |
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