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Former members who spoke to the Guardian also allege that teenage girls and young women were sexually exploited at Midtown, where they were regularly pressured and coerced into \u201cdating\u201d and having sex with multiple men who were also Midtown members \u2013 sometimes decades older than them. In at least one case, a former member said she believes that what happened to her could be described as sex trafficking.People who knew Carr during his years in Midtown say they do not believe he participated in inappropriate behavior. He was seen as providing a \u201csafe respite\u201d in an environment where some teenage girls and young women bore the brunt of \u201cforced relationships, restrictive diets\u201d and psychological manipulation, one former member said. He was described, too, by that former member, as sensitive and desperate for the approval of others. Another former member said Carr was \u201cnever among\u201d the predators, whom she knew well, and that he was a \u201cvictim\u201d of Midtown.The Guardian\u2019s investigation is based on interviews with 14 former members of Midtown, contemporaneous recordings of Midtown members discussing their sobriety journey, and photographs.At the heart of the Midtown group was Quinones, described as the \u201cEpstein of AA\u201d by one former member, Tammy S.The people who spoke to the Guardian were members of the group in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Being a member of Midtown did not necessarily mean a person was an alcoholic, according to most of the former members. Sometimes young people were sent there by their parents, especially parents who had a history of drinking problems, as a way to try to correct problematic behavior.In response to detailed questions from the Guardian, a spokesperson for Carr at the FCC said: \u201cHe did not engage in any of the allegedly illegal conduct or abusive behavior you reference.\u201d The spokesperson added: \u201cAny suggestion that he knew of the allegedly illegal or abusive conduct you point to would be false.\u201d The spokesperson did not respond to questions for Carr about how he would describe his time at Midtown or his relationship with Quinones.Carr joined the group in 1996, when he was about 17 years old and a senior in high school, and appears to have remained a member for about nine years, including while attending law school, according to the Guardian\u2019s reporting. While it is difficult to pinpoint when exactly Carr left the group, he spoke about his sobriety journey in a recorded Midtown speech in 2005, in which he also referenced that he was in his last semester of law school. The Guardian has also seen a group photograph of a men\u2019s retreat that sources said was taken in 2006. In it, Carr is standing a few rows behind Quinones. He would have been about 27 years old in 2006. Carr, through a spokesperson, denied being a member of Midtown \u201cup to and through 2006\u201d.A woman whom Carr dated, who joined Midtown when she was a teenager, described him as a \u201csafe\u201d person, amid a sea of predatory older men, who had even \u201csnuck\u201d french fries to her once because she was being kept on a very strict diet. It was an act he could have been punished for, she said.She was among multiple sources who told the Guardian that Midtown was a place where people were \u201centrenched\u201d in each other\u2019s lives, even though they might not have fully understood at the time that things that were happening were wrong.\u201cObviously it was widely known that teenage girls were sleeping with older men, it was such a part of our culture. It took me to my late 20s to understand it was wrong,\u201d she said. \u201cI was 16, sleeping with a 55-year-old. That was just the way things worked there.\u201dA former Midtown member who was friends with Carr and lived with him in Silver Spring, Maryland, when they were in college acknowledged that members had \u201cdrunk the Kool-Aid\u201d when it came to Midtown\u2019s then leader, \u201cMike Q\u201d. The former roommate, who asked not to be identified, recalled cleaning Quinones\u2019 house for free along with other Midtown members, and doing other chores as so-called acts of service. But he also described it as among the best times of his life, when he forged deep friendships, and said that, while bad things happened, he did not personally believe \u2013 as others do \u2013 that it was fair to call Midtown a \u201csex cult\u201d.However, he says, \u201cWhat Mike Quinones was able to pull together was more like a cult than an AA group. It was an amazing outlet for young people to get sober. But unfortunately, that outlet included people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. Were there bad actors doing shady stuff? Hell yeah.\u201dPeople who spoke to the Guardian \u2013 some of them using their names, or partial names, and others asking to remain anonymous \u2013 said they believed it was important for the public to understand the trauma they and hundreds of others endured inside the clutches of a group that \u201cmasqueraded\u201d as a legitimate recovery program for young people in the late 90s and 2000s. They described years of intense trauma therapy and complicated feelings of being both a victim of Midtown\u2019s coercive control and feeling guilty for remaining in the group, sometimes for years.Some also believe it is important to reveal Carr\u2019s presence in the group, given the prominent position he has as \u201cMaga\u2019s media watchdog\u201d. In a major departure from past FCC chairs, Carr has threatened to withdraw broadcasters\u2019 licences over news coverage that he has deemed to be unfair to the administration.Lydia, one former Midtown member who only wanted the Guardian to use her first name because of fear of retaliation, said: \u201cThe wounds inflicted upon us during our time trapped at Midtown have formed scars.\u201d\u201cA man who has the power to control what types of stories the mainstream public have access to is a man who should expect the narrative of his own life to fall under scrutiny,\u201d she said.Asked to respond to that and other claims, a spokesperson for Carr said: \u201cThe fact that [Carr] got sober over 30 years ago as a teenager\u201d was being publicized and weaponized by a small number of people, as part of \u201can effort to embarrass or pressure him into doing his job differently\u201d.The first public sign that things were not quite right at Midtown emerged in May 2007, when Newsweek published an article titled Critics Say Washington AA Chapter Is Cultlike. It described how \u201cangry\u201d former members of Midtown had come to believe the group was \u201ccoercive\u201d and \u201ccultlike\u201d and used the trusted AA name to \u201cinduce young alcoholics into a radical fringe movement that has little resemblance to traditional AA\u201d. The article said that critics of the group had tried to complain to the police, but law enforcement officials had not found evidence of wrongdoing.The Newsweek article was followed a few months later, in July 2007, by an article in the Washington Post, which described Midtown as a \u201crigidly insular world of group homes and socializing, in which older men had sex with teenage girls\u201d. It also described an environment in which members\u2019 ties to family and friends were \u201csevered or strained\u201d and vulnerable people were encouraged to stop taking prescription medication. The article quoted one Montgomery county police sergeant as pointing out that they had not been able to charge anyone with wrongdoing because girls were having sex at age 16 or 17, and it was legal.The article included a statement the group issued that year in response to questions raised by some parents, therapists and churches where Midtown held meetings. It denied improper acts and said: \u201cWe do not condone underage sex. While we are not the arbiter of other people\u2019s sex conduct, underage sex is illegal and our experience shows that it can endanger your sobriety.\u201dAt the center of Midtown was \u201cMike Q\u201d, a veteran of the Vietnam war who had a drinking problem, sources said, began attending AA and got sober. One former member \u2013 who asked not to be named \u2013 described Quinones as charming and said he had been able to commandeer an AA meeting that was in existence since the 1950s, which met at the Church of the Pilgrims in the DuPont Circle neighborhood, in the heart of Washington. Using his persuasion and influence, he could convince young people that there was one \u201cright\u201d way to get sober, and that deviating from it would lead to certain alcohol-related death, or prison, or institutionalization.The Church of the Pilgrims in Washington DC on 24 March 2018. Following the 2007 stories, sources said the church kicked Midtown out. Photograph: Near Infinity Studios/AlamySources have described to the Guardian that this belief system made them fear leaving the group, even when they believed they should. Parents and teens came to know that Midtown was a place to go for young people to get sober, get a sponsor, attend regular meetings and develop a social network free of alcohol that was still fun.But it was vastly different from AA. In the traditional recovery program, individuals were sponsored by people of the same gender and single newcomers were encouraged not to date in their first year. At Midtown, Lydia and other sources said, a person\u2019s sponsor could pressure them to date within weeks, young women could be sponsored by men, and Midtown directed people to view their family and friends as potentially dangerous individuals who would lead them back to drinking. Meetings were held every day at Midtown, sometimes twice a day.The group was effectively run by Quinones and his crew of about four lieutenants, called \u201cpigeons\u201d, and each of those had groups of people they sponsored, said Elizabeth, a former member.\u201cMike was the one who determined how we lived our lives and instituted rules,\u201d said another former member. There were daily check-ins with sponsors, who offered instructions on everything from who to date, where to work, whether to attend a family gathering, what kind of car to buy and what diet to follow. Personal information about how one may have wronged another person \u2013 referred to as a \u201cfearless moral inventory\u201d \u2013 would be shared with sponsors, and sometimes make its way to Quinones, where it could be used in a coercive way, former members allege.Dr Ellen Dye, a clinical psychologist based in Rockville, Maryland, who was quoted in the 2007 articles, said she had heard rumors about Midtown for years, including that it was cultlike. Then one of her patients got clean and joined the group.\u201cShe had a very scripted life that I\u2019d never heard of before at AA. Everyone was telling her what she could and could not do. They even picked a boyfriend for her and were controlling her life,\u201d Dye recalled. When Dye tried to point out that what was happening was not normal, her patient insisted that it was and left therapy. Ultimately, the patient came back to her and told Dye she believed Midtown was a sexually exploitative cult. She asked Dye to participate in the Newsweek article to get the word out. Dye recalled her patient telling her that Quinones had said \u201cyou won\u2019t be able to drink if my dick is in your mouth\u201d.Lacie W, a former member of Midtown, said she could also remember men making that \u201cjoke\u201d.\u201cIt was said in front of young women and teenagers. In my opinion, it was said in the form of a joke, but also to pave the way for that to happen. Like as if to say, if that happens, it\u2019s not a big deal. It is part of the process,\u201d Lacie W said.Dye said she was not an expert in defining a cult, but that her patient had begun to act like someone who was under coercive control, similarly to a person who is in an abusive relationship. When a person in such a situation is confronted, she said, they will often quote the person who is controlling them to defend their actions, instead of expressing their own opinions.Tammy S said she joined Midtown in 1996, when she was 28 and Quinones was in his early 50s. She recalled how 72 hours after they met, he informed her they would be having sex. She began to date him and lived with him for two years.\u201cI was older so it gave him some reprieve from the reputation that he only dated teenagers,\u201d Tammy S said, though she points out he once told her he believed she had the mentality of a 13-year-old.She said she remembers overhearing conversations among older men about how it was important to have sex with teenagers in Maryland, where the age of consent was 16, and not in Virginia, where it was 18. When she brought it up she was told it was not her business to be the \u201carbiter of any one else\u2019s sex conduct\u201d. \u201cThat\u2019s the way it went. You were shunned if you questioned things,\u201d she said. She and Quinones eventually broke up.Shortly before his death, Quinones admitted to Tammy S that he had sexual relations with a 15-year-old. But he blamed the teenage girl for coming on to him.Mandi Pagliarini, now 44, was a member of Midtown from age 15 to 22, and now posts about her experience of what she calls \u201cchild trafficking and child violation\u201d on Instagram. In one post, Pagliarini described how, like other young people she met, she never really needed a 12-step program. When her parents discovered she was smoking pot, she was sent to an adolescent treatment facility \u2013 a hospital \u2013 which in turn instructed her to attend \u201c90 meetings in 90 days\u201d as part of her discharge instructions. The hospital staff referred her to Midtown, which was known for being a young people\u2019s group.There were cute high school and college-aged boys there, and Pagliarini quickly adopted an entire social life around the group.Mike Quinones and Mandi Pagliarini in about 2003. Photograph: Courtesy of Mandi PagliariniAmid the sorority-like fun, she said, were acts of labor, and daily self-analysis and confession to a sponsor. There were \u201cverbal lashings\u201d, strict diets for girls, and a \u201cconstant cycle\u201d of fear and shame \u2013 followed often by love bombing, a form of manipulation in which someone is inundated with affection. Eventually, Pagliarini said, she began to be \u201cnudged\u201d toward older men, initially those in their late 20s and 30s. And then even older men.\u201cWe were structured like a pyramid, with the old-timers at the top, holding the power. The higher up the pyramid I was nudged, the more privileges and less labor I had to perform,\u201d she said in one Instagram post. She was eventually sent to \u201cMike\u201d.\u201cThe consequence of resistance outweighed enduring the act,\u201d she wrote in a post on Instagram.Pagliarini and other sources have described how Quinones appeared to be relatively wealthy. She has said she realized later that men were giving him money, including the proceeds of any events. Several sources said Quinones would be gifted large items, including a luxury car and vacations. There was a kind of tithing system, in which members paid his rent and took him out to eat, former members allege.Adam Johnson was just 13 when he joined Midtown in 2005 and stayed for five years. During his most active years, he was attending a meeting every day \u2013 seven days a week \u2013 and believes one of the most troubling aspects of the group was the way members were expected not only to provide their sponsors with an \u201cinventory\u201d of the bad things they had done, including resentments, but also a \u201csexual inventory\u201d. At the time, he trusted his sponsor. But now he realized the act of sharing such information was \u201ca threat that had power over me\u201d. Unlike a therapist, sponsors were not bound by secrecy.Johnson said it was considered completely normal for 15-year-old girls to be \u201cdating\u201d 20- or 21-year-old men, though he was not personally aware of instances of sexual trafficking of girls to even older men.Johnson said it was ingrained in people that there were addicts and there were \u201cnormal\u201d people, and that this belief helped older members justify to others and themselves that a 15-year-old girl had more in common with a fellow addict who was in his 20s than a boy her age.Claire Perna joined Midtown and got sober when she was 16, in 2001, and remembers how when she first met Quinones, he seemed older than her parents. He was like a grandfather figure, she said. Given the age difference, she said in her own mind she never saw him as a threat. He first came on to her when she was a few months sober. He invited her to his house and she recalled how they walked into his bedroom and lay on his bed together. She was uncomfortable and got out of the situation without having sex with him. But when she told her sponsor what happened, and that it had been weird, she remembers seeing a look of disappointment and disapproval on her sponsor\u2019s face.\u201cQuinones really groomed me. After the first time he tried to have sex with me, he altered his approach and focused on the flattery, extra attention, how we were alike and other people wouldn\u2019t really understand us,\u201d she said.By the time she turned 17, Perna said she was regularly having sex with Quinones, as well as other much older men in the group. So was a friend of hers who was even younger than she was.\u201cI think that that group was about men \u2026 Women were just objects for entertainment,\u201d she said. Her recollection of Carr was as someone who was jovial, laughing at jokes with friends, and a little condescending. He seemed like a \u201ccool college kid\u201d, she said.Perna said she believed a number of adult members were aware of her relationship with Quinones, but that she did not believe Carr knew.\u201cWhen I had three years sober, something cracked. I just couldn\u2019t take it any more,\u201d she said. She moved back with her parents. Perna only realized how completely Midtown deviated from normal AA when she started attending regular AA meetings.\u201cI am grateful for my life today but I feel very sad for the person I was, that I spent so much of my life in that group, where I was gaslit to think that things that are so fucked-up were acceptable and normal,\u201d she said.The publication of the Newsweek and Washington Post articles in 2007 had an immediate effect: the church on 22nd and P Street, where the group had its usual big Sunday meeting, kicked Midtown out, sources said. Quinones had been ill and some of his power had transferred to his lieutenants before his death that year. Over time, there was a slow exodus from the group, Lydia and other sources said, as people began to \u201cgrow up and get older\u201d.\u201cOnce you got to your 30s and 40s, people began to think, \u2018What the hell am I doing here?\u2019\u201d she said.An AA group called Midtown still exists today, and meets in suburban Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington. Sources who spoke to the Guardian say it is not the group it once was and there are no allegations that Midtown today \u2013 nearly two decades after Quinones\u2019 death from cancer \u2013 is like a cult.Carr, who was appointed as chair of the FCC by Trump, wields his power in unprecedented ways, particularly against the president\u2019s perceived enemies. Last year Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily taken off the air shortly after the FCC chair blasted the late-night host for comments he made following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Carr later defended his comments, saying local affiliates were \u201cobligated\u201d to scrutinize entertainment content that \u201cdoes not serve the public interest\u201d.Then presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr at a viewing of a SpaceX rocket launch on 19 November 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesWhen Trump recently criticized NBC journalist Kristen Welker, Carr suggested the FCC was \u201cweighing options\u201d, and issued a warning to broadcasters not to air \u201cfake polls\u201d that could suppress voters heading into midterm elections. Carr \u2013 who has been photographed wearing a golden lapel pin of Trump\u2019s head \u2013 has defended his rhetoric, saying he is simply trying to force broadcasters to \u201coperate in the public interest, not some sort of narrow, partisan interest\u201d.Victor Pickard, a media professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said Carr had jettisoned his principles to serve \u201cone man\u201d in the White House and does not even pretend to be independent.\u201cThere was never a perfect FCC that exhibited zero partisanship,\u201d he said. But as a scholar, he noted that \u201cnever in history\u201d has there been such an \u201cextreme capture\u201d of the regulator as there is today. \u201cNothing is remotely similar,\u201d he said.\u201cHe seems to wake up every day trying to figure out how he can serve Donald Trump,\u201d Pickard added.In the opening paragraphs of a profile of Carr published by Bloomberg Businessweek in March, it noted how Carr was largely \u201cunnotable and unnoticed\u201d when he was an undergraduate student at Georgetown University. Carr has emerged as such a powerful enforcer in Trump\u2019s Washington \u2013 having sparred publicly with Kimmel and Stephen Colbert \u2013 that alumni from the elite Jesuit college later scoured their yearbook to see if it was true that this young man whom they could not remember had graduated with them in 2001. The yearbook contained just a single mention of his name among a \u201cslightly sorrowful list of unpictured students\u201d, the article noted. Carr\u2019s involvement in Midtown was not included in this or any other published profile.But two biographical facts contained in the Businessweek article are consistent with Carr\u2019s Midtown affiliation. First, that the boy who had grown up in McLean, Virginia \u2013 a suburban, wealthy and relatively conservative enclave, famously close to CIA headquarters \u2013 had stayed close to home during his college years: one year at James Madison University in Virginia, then transferring to Georgetown, followed by law school at the Catholic University, in north-east Washington. It was understood inside Midtown, sources said, that members were not to stray too far from DC. Second, the profile noted that Carr had lived in a \u201cgroup house\u201d in Silver Spring, Maryland, \u201cwith a group of home-town buddies\u201d. He was living with other members of Midtown.There was an \u201cexpectation\u201d that Midtown members would live exclusively with other Midtown members, former members say. The stated intention was to support people\u2019s sobriety, but one source said it also made it more difficult to leave the group.Carr lived for about two years in the Silver Spring home with three other Midtown members, public records indicate. One roommate who was interviewed by the Guardian said Carr was one of his best friends at the time. An internal 2002 Midtown phone directory indicates that Carr later moved to a home in Vienna, Virginia. Three other Midtown members shared the address, including Francisco Convit, a Venezuelan who was studying at university at the time. The Department of Justice now considers Convit to be a fugitive following his indictment for money laundering in 2018. He is a cousin of Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan tycoon who is described as Trump\u2019s partner in his bid to control Venezuelan oil resources. Adam Kaufmann, a lawyer who represented Convit, did not provide a comment to the Guardian about Convit\u2019s apparent membership in Midtown or his living arrangements at the time.Asked about his living arrangements during those years, a spokesperson for Carr at the FCC denied he lived in a \u201cMidtown group home\u201d. The spokesperson did not respond to specific questions about Carr\u2019s roommates during that period, who sources say were members of the group.The spokesperson did not respond to questions about Convit.The Guardian has heard two recordings of Carr when he was still in Midtown. In one, he described his upbringing, how he had gotten drunk about 10 times before he joined Midtown, and how someone had said \u2013 seemingly as a joke \u2013 that he could get a date to the prom if he joined AA. He also spoke of getting sober, of his need for other people\u2019s approval and of the importance sobriety had played in his household. Midtown was described as \u201ca lot more than a meeting to me\u201d.Carr was described by one former member as a \u201cvictim of Midtown\u201d, who was a young kid who got trapped, they said.\u201cHe was never involved in anything shady, and was actually the reverse, quite a stand-up guy. I was the sponsor to all the young girls and know all the predators well. Brendan was never among them,\u201d the person said. She also said Carr \u201cwould never\u201d have instructed people he sponsored to sleep with another person, although he \u201cwas sponsored by people who would\u201d.A former member said he believed it was evident at the time to people inside Midtown that inappropriate things were happening.\u201cHe knew the deal and he hung around there \u2026 I did the same thing. But I should not be the chair of the FCC, either,\u201d the former member said.A spokesperson for Carr has denied he had any knowledge of inappropriate conduct occurring at Midtown.Another person who spoke to the Guardian about her experience with Carr but did not want to be identified speaking about him said Midtown had \u201chijacked the name AA to bring people in\u201d, and was full of kids from prominent and well-to-do families. Carr\u2019s own father was a successful lawyer who once worked for Richard Nixon.\u201cA lot of kids were from prep schools, and you got busted drinking or with drugs and you were sent to Midtown to \u2018learn a lesson\u2019 and just got trapped,\u201d the woman, who dated Carr, said.While the woman was deeply critical of Midtown, she expressed warmth toward Carr.\u201cMike [Quinones] liked women who were bone thin. We were all eating next to nothing and Brendan would sneak me fries because he cared about me and knew I was hungry. That sounds like a stupid and small thing, but he could have been severely punished for that,\u201d she said.A spokesperson for Carr at the FCC did not respond to questions about this alleged incident.The woman continued: \u201cBrendan got gobbled up like everyone else. Here is the thing. Mike Quinones was in his 50s and liked to sleep with young girls. And there were some older men at the top, his lieutenants. But you are not going to get a 15-year-old like me to hang out [if there are not young men there]. You needed younger guys to serve as bait,\u201d she said.The woman said one of her most distinct memories of Carr was coming home and seeing him sitting at the kitchen table and sobbing, because he had \u201cbombed\u201d his LSAT, the standardized test students take before they apply to law school.\u201cHis dad had a whole plan for his life and he wanted so badly to please him and was beside himself. And I was like, \u2018You are going to take them again and you\u2019re going to be fine.\u2019 And he eventually went on, obviously, and did all that,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cHe is one of the most tender souls and so desperate to please, and desperate to have a place to belong.\u201d\u201cHe was such a fragile guy,\u201d she said.A spokesperson for Carr at the FCC did not respond to questions about this alleged incident.The woman who dated Carr \u2013 who says she is apolitical \u2013 shared a message she sent Carr over Facebook, around the time when his first conflict with Kimmel was in the news.\u201cWhether you\u2019ve taken much time to consider it or not, I think you can admit the environment we grew up in was very unhealthy. And though you could probably surmise, it was way worse for the girls,\u201d she wrote, pointing to the brutality of \u201cforced \u2018relationships\u2019, restrictive diets, and psychological beatings\u201d. She thanked Carr for being a \u201cconsistent, safe respite\u201d and said she believed that both she and Carr had been among the most \u201cfervent defenders\u201d of Midtown \u201cwhen called to do so\u201d because they were the \u201chungriest\u201d for belonging.She closed the letter with a plea: \u201cYou are fortified in yourself as a man \u2013 a man who has a family of his own now. You do not need the approval, or validation of anyone outside of you. You have your own table now, you don\u2019t need to earn a seat at anyone else\u2019s. He is Mike, Brendan. And I know you know that.\u201dIt was a reference to Trump. 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