Keith Bakker

Bakker grew up in Westport, Connecticut in an unstable family environment. His father was an alcoholic businessman who had emigrated from the Netherlands. Bakker started using alcohol and drugs himself as a teenager. He used heroin for the first time on his eighteenth birthday. In the 1980s, Bakker worked for some time as a roadie, travelling with Michael Jackson, Prince and Bruce Springsteen, among others.[1]

Bakker came to Amsterdam in 1985. The following years were those of severe drug addiction, leading a lifestyle of sleeping under bridges, scamming tourists to earn money and searching trash cans for food. He also contracted HIV after using an infected syringe. In 1989, he came into contact with a social worker of Youth With A Mission, who helped him become clean. After that, Bakker married and became a music industry manager.

In 1996, Bakker relapsed into a hard drug addiction. After a trial during which he threatened a police officer because he wanted to be convicted, he was sent to the Jellinek clinic in Amsterdam. In July 1998, he had a heart attack after having taken an overdose of drugs under a bridge. A month later, Bakker was clean again after a stay in a hospital and following the Minnesota Model therapy program in Scotland. He subsequently decided to start helping other addicts getting rid of their addiction.

In 2004, Bakker opened his Smith & Jones clinic for drug and alcohol addicts, which in 2006 became the first clinic in Europe to focus on people with a video game addiction.[2] The clinic had establishments in Amsterdam and Wassenaar.

In the same period, Bakker also appeared regularly on Dutch television in talk shows and reality series. He was a frequent guest in Spuiten en Slikken as an addiction expert and coached troubled teenagers (and their families) in Van etter tot engel and Family Matters. 2008 also saw the release of Bakker's biography titled Pushing the Limits, written by Dutch author Leon Verdonschot.

By the end of 2009, during an interview with NCRV, Bakker stated that it was thanks to his clinic that he had managed to introduce the Twelve-Step Program in the Netherlands, which he had followed himself in Scotland.

Having become involved in a renting conflict, Bakker resigned as manager of Smith & Jones in September 2010. The clinic itself was closed shortly afterwards.[3]

By the end of 2010, Bakker was accused of sexual abuse by several of his female clients.[4] After investigation by the Amsterdam vice squad, Bakker was arrested in April 2011 and was held on remand since then. During the trial in March 2012, Bakker admitted that he performed sexual acts with some of his clients, but denied that he had sexual intercourse with them. He declared that he used sex as a sedative. In April 2012 eventually, the court convicted Bakker for sexual abuse and sentenced him to five years of imprisonment and a ten-year prohibition of executing his profession as a mental health practitioner.[5] His clinic Smith & Jones had already been declared bankrupt in March 2011.[6]

Bakker was released from prison in September 2014.

Nowadays, Bakker is involved in a number of new projects. He has set up the Keith Bakker Foundation, for example. This foundation has, among other things, set up the 'Bajes to Business' and 'The Goliath Project'. In doing so, he makes a case for (former) prisoners. The Goliath Project is committed to the rights of detainees. Keith's vision is that all prisoners in The Netherlands who need it, should have the right to the Minnesota model and other forms of addiction care. The Bajes to Business programme focuses on life after detention. In this programme (former) prisoners are encouraged and coached to become part of society again, in a positive way, by setting up their own business.

In 2018, Keith Bakker founded and launched the Goliath project 2018. The original "Goliath project" was launched in 2000 by Keith Bakker as well. The focus of the original Goliath project was cross- border healthcare inside the EU based on Article 86 of the European treaty.[7] As the result of his efforts, two major UK clinics, Castle Craig and the Priory group were able to treat Dutch patients in the United Kingdom.[8]

The Goliath project 2018 is an advocate/ activist organization that is focused on medically managed addiction treatment for prisoners in the European union. The basis for their efforts is article 3 of the EU human rights charter.[9]