Addicts' families angered to learn closed rehab centre isn't bankrupt
March 17, 2010
Andrew Chung
QUEBEC BUREAU
MONTREAL–When the Clear Haven Centre, a residential addiction treatment facility, abruptly closed its doors on Jan. 7 and dumped its clients at the Montreal airport, its owner said it was "going into receivership."
Clients were told of the shutdown less than 90 minutes before they were packed on to a bus and sent to the airport.
However, more than two months later, there is no bankruptcy filing, raising questions among former clients and their families about the need for a hasty closing.
Former staff and clients say the sudden move severely disrupted the lives of recovering drug addicts. Some residents started using cocaine on the bus to the airport.
One client overdosed on heroin and died within days of returning home. Some others have also relapsed into their drug habits.
The private facility, located in the Laurentian town of Chertsey, north of Montreal, accepted new clients in the eight days before it closed.
Owner Terry Orsten, a dentist in Fort McMurray, Alta., didn't respond to requests for an interview, but "there is no bankruptcy, there are no procedures against him," his Montreal lawyer, Donald Seal, confirmed.
"He closed down of his own volition," Seal said. "He lost a lot of money. In the end, it bled too much."
To his knowledge, Seal added, Orsten has paid all his suppliers. Twenty clients who paid up front but did not receive all their treatment "may be the only losers in the shuffle."
Former staff members say they weren't paid their final wages. A number of them have complained to Quebec's Labour Standards Commission, which has opened an investigation and can sue on their behalf.
The fact that Orsten did not, in the end, declare bankruptcy, has raised the ire of those affected by the closing.
"It makes it even worse because if it wasn't bad enough to file for bankruptcy, then please tell me why do you need to shut it down literally in an hour?" said Elliott Chamberlain, who raised Elijah Peabbles, the 26-year-old man who overdosed the day after returning home to Falmouth, Maine. Peabbles later died in hospital.
"I'd think you'd stop accepting new patients, run out the terms of existing patients, lay off employees, and wind down the company," said Chamberlain, who owns a business.
"You don't treat human beings like that."
"It's inhumane," echoed Maryann, a Toronto resident who paid $8,000 to send her brother to Clear Haven and then wired another $3,200 prior to the shutdown so he could stay an extra month.
"They could have found another place for them, and not accepted new ones," said Maryann, who asked that her last name not be published. "I hope (Orsten) is put behind bars."
California resident Kevin, who had nearly completed his program and has remained off prescription painkillers, said the fact that there was no bankruptcy "changes everything."
"It means the reasons they gave (for the closure) were complete lies. It was the decision of one man, Terry Orsten."
Peabbles' family has hired a lawyer who is working with a Montreal firm. Chamberlain declined to say if a lawsuit is imminent. Others are also still considering a lawsuit.
"If he truly was bankrupt, maybe it gave him financial reason to do what he did, but not how he did it," said Lenore Chavez of Las Vegas, who had to fly to Montreal to pick up her son at Montreal's airport. "Now that he's not bankrupt, it makes a situation that was negligent even more so."
Orsten "went through a tremendous personal depression," Seal said. "When you're trying your best and putting your heart and soul and all your money behind it you don't feel good."
Seal held Orsten "is not a bad person in spite of what happened. It just about killed him."
Toronto Star
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