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Foiled charity looks for new drug centre

Daily Telegraph, 3 March 1997

By PAUL STOKES

A charity thwarted in its attempt to set up a centre for former drug addicts after villagers in North Yorkshire outbid it for a property is to continue its search for premises in the area.

Residents in Burton Leonard, near Ripon, raised more than UKP175,000 in less than a week to buy a nursing home and prevent it being taken over by a group whose practices have allegedly been linked to those of the Church of Scientology.

People who put up money staged a victory march through the village. As they did so, Kenneth Eckersley, the director of the Addiction Recovery Training Services, was planning to look at two properties within a few miles of the village as an alternative centre for the charity Narconon (No Narcotics) whose base in Dover, Kent, was closed.

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