Moose Jaw police say they've had ‘no previous complaints’ about ALS health centre. They're mistaken

Two people who filed formal complaints with Moose Jaw police about the Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Center in Moose Jaw, Sask. are asking why the police force publicly said it had found no record of any such complaints.  

Late last month, Moose Jaw police confirmed they were launching an investigation into the controversial health centre after a complaint from the provincial NDP Opposition.

In a letter, the NDP raised concerns about “potential fraud, criminal neglect and a failure to provide the necessities of life” at the clinic.

In an emailed letter to supporters, Dayan Goodenowe, the founder of the Moose Jaw centre, said the NDP was “grandstanding” in making allegations which he characterized as a “false narrative.”  

“Please be assured that we will not allow these false accusations to go unpunished,” he wrote in the Dec. 5 email. 

The NDP filed its complaint after a CBC story about Susie Silvestri, a 70-year-old American who sold her home so she could attend Goodenowe’s three-month restorative health program, convinced she would be healed.

Police told media this appeared to be the first complaint they had received relating to the company, writing that “an initial search of our records management systems indicated that no previous complaints or active investigations have been received in relation to the business in question.”

Teresa Sando, a former client of Goodenowe’s centre, was livid when she read that statement from police in media coverage. 

“That’s a bold lie,” she wrote in a text to CBC. “I made an online written complaint.”

She filed that detailed complaint a year ago, on Jan. 2, 2025. 

Her complaint began, “The Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Center in Moose Jaw is running a medical fraud/scam on ALS patients and their caretakers, who all live in the USA.”  

In it, she told police that Dayan Goodenowe had publicly claimed to have “discovered the ability to stop the progression of ALS which is a fatal neurodegenerative disease with no known cure. He claims to have done so on 15 out of 15 patients.”  

CBC previously reported that those promises motivated Sando and her husband Geoff, an ALS patient, to enroll in Goodenowe’s three-month live-in program at a cost of $75,000 US. Sando said Geoff and several other ALS clients of Goodenowe saw their health deteriorate rather than improve.  

Goodenowe has sued CBC over those stories, alleging they are defamatory. He has also repeatedly declined an interview with CBC. His lawyer wrote that “we don’t talk to people we are in active litigation against.”