I would like to point out a few things available to you. While I greatly dislike prompting mugshot removal sites, take the time to read this
recent article on one of those scam site. The article is about a real case. Case law is such that while ROR may be protected under section 230 of the CDA, the posters on the site are not. An attorney can force ROR to reveal the IP and other identifying information about the poster, and that poster is liable for libel. Funny thing about libel: while slander is protected if it is true, libel is not protected even if true. The difference? Slander is the spoken word while libel is the written word. Be forewarned that Ed Magedson will fight to prevent having to reveal the posters information, it is a losing battle for him if you have the funds to continue the lawsuit past his delaying and subverting tactics.
As others have told you, you can attempt to out rank the page. Your experience has shown you how difficult this is. If you have a few hundred blogs, etc. that show up under the keyword you are attempting to rank for, then you can easily outrank an ROR page.
Will neg SEO work on an ROR URL? Possibly. You are not attacking the root domain, so that all those that are claiming neg SEO against an authority site will not work are speaking from a lack of knowledge and are regurgitating what they have read that someone else wrote without attempting it themselves. However, there is a possibility that any neg SEO will backfire. I have personally knocked back serps for the authority site Pissed Consumer with a few hundred spammy links from Google disapproved domains. It is possible, but you must be prepared for any back lash. ROR is much tougher than Pissed Consumer, Complaints Board, Complaints.com, Scam Advocates, etc. I have also used the same method to get all the search engines to delist a website that is cybersquating on my personal name. The guy, Kelly Joe Ellis in Joplin/Carthage Missouri, still registers the domain that is cybersquatting my name, but the domain is useless because it is delisted. He has a few other domain names that are cyberquated that I have gotten delisted for others.
With ROR what I have found to be a better method is to create a fake complaint that presents your side and your business. In the heading and article title list the keywords you want to rank for. Let Google pick it up, and then push a few links to it. With this method, you want the ROR to show on the first page because you are beating the crap page and people see your side first. More often than not the side that gets their information seen first wins the battle of propaganda.