Canada Center Has Ex-CIA, RCMP Ferret Cyber Defamers

Addiction Treatment Industry Newswire

11/24/2012 – ATIN- After years of varying besmirchments posted anonymously by cyber URL hijackers looking to influence potential clients as they have sought access to his addiction treatment drug rehab alcohol rehab

center Web sites, addictions entrepreneur John Haines says he plans to file major defamation actions north of the border in Canada, along the way hiring high powered former CIA and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMP, cyber sleuths to expose those who are undermining access to Haines’ web assets and, according to Haines, inventing negative publicity concerning the treatment entrepreneur’s personal history and the extensive addictions operations he has spent the last 10 years building.

“NOT F…ING AROUND”

Gradually increasing in frequency, stridency and villainy the posts seem to have become much more than the mere nuisance kind about which many treatment centers have over the years contacted Treatment Magazine, usually regarding NIMBY or former client complaints of varying validity and importance. “But when someone falsely characterizes me as some kind of gross person who makes low-life sexual advances among other completely false accusations, I am here to say that no one is going to get away with that,” Haines told Treatment Magazine late last week. “It’s going to cost a lot of money in legal fees, not to mention my time, but these people are going to be held accountable. We are going to throw the book at them.” Canada, whose legal traditions are much more closely allied and influenced by those of the UK, has extremely strict libel and defamation standards relative to those of the U.S.

Vita Novus

About 10 years ago, after getting clean himself in a typical addictions entrepreneurial genesis, Haines founded Vita Novus as a modest mostly outpatient operation designed to supplement the rather limited addiction services provided by Canada’s largely state-run medical industry. Since then, Vita Novus has become a mini holding company type entity as Haines has expanded into residential and other services, along the way driving revenues to nearly C$6M, he says. His latest venture is the purchase of an outdoors camp facility in a lakes district about two hours from Toronto. Pickerel Lake Recovery Center will be a hybrid residential center and resort getaway for those already in recovery from addiction, also offering short-term therapeutic seminars of the type pioneered by the famous Meadows center in Arizona.. And Haines says he is in negotiations to acquire a property nearer Toronto where he plans on launching an adolescent operation. Vita Novus’ growth is a microcosm of the type of growth that has occurred across Canada in private treatment, picking up in intensity considerably in the last several years. Since 1980, many dozens of private for-profit and non-profit centers have opened across a country that has a population roughly the same as California with a land mass that is now, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, by far the largest in the world.

Perry Litchfield and Bayside Marin

One of the first addictions entrepreneurs to see their Web assets hijacked in an effort by cyber defamers was Perry Litchfield, who pioneered the high end addiction treatment market in tony Marin County, among the most idyllic of California settings that is connected to the huge and wealthy San Francisco market by the famous Golden Gate Bridge. Litchfield, a lawyer and pioneer in private mediated dispute resolution, was the first to bring Malibu style addictions care into Marin County. He made a a few enemies along the way who feared for property values and hounded Litchfield with NIMBY objections and roadblocks. Particularly galling to Litchfield was the systematic hijacking of Net traffic meant for his Bayside Marin site to a site that contained all sorts of falsehoods concerning himself and Bayside Marin. A determined and hardworking entrepreneur, Litchfield swept the cyber-attacks aside, grew Bayside Marin into an 18-bed residential operation with a major greenfield outpatient operation build-out in downtown Sausalito. CRC Health Corp stepped up and bought Bayside after it had just a few years operating history, making the deal a model for addictions entrepreneurs seeking to be in the industry for a good time, not a long time. In other words, a model for those more interested in an entrepreneurial and investment accomplishment, with a quick exit to value realization of five years or less. Litchfield is one of a very few who has been able to execute succssfully on this type of strategic business plan in the addictions space.