Healing lodge for killer ‘not justice’
The father of a raped and murdered eight-year-old girl said on Wednesday the transfer of one of her killers to a prison “healing lodge” has sparked widespread anger and needs to be reversed, while the federal government said it would review the decision.
Conservative justice critic Tony Clement accused the Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being soft on crime and called the transfer a miscarriage of justice that has revictimized the families.
“This is not the kind of justice that Canadians expect (and) I’m demanding redress,” Clement said. “When people lose faith in our justice system, they take matters into their own hands.”
In an interview from his home in Woodstock, Ont., Rodney Stafford denounced the transfer of Terri-Lynne McClintic as “completely wrong.”
“She should be serving her sentence in a maximum security prison,” Stafford said of his daughter’s killer. “Like I’m sitting here living day to day, going to work, having to struggle to get by because my life has been altered so bad — I’m still on this huge emotional roller-coaster — and like frickin’ she’s out living it up… in this healing lodge.”
McClintic pleaded guilty in 2010 to the first-degree murder of Victoria (Tori) Stafford, who was last seen in April 2008 being led away by the hand after school. McClintic, then 18, had promised to show the trusting girl a puppy. Waiting nearby was McClintic’s boyfriend, Michael Rafferty, who drove his victim to a remote field where he raped her repeatedly.
In 2014, McClintic was classified as a medium security inmate at the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ont. In December, two days after the transfer, victims services wrote the family to inform them of McClintic’s move to the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge on the Nekaneet First Nation near Maple Creek, Sask.
“She’s basically living it up better than the majority of the people living on the streets or are low income families,” Stafford, 43, said. “She’s being handed all these free passes and luxuries. It’s not fair.”
Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford called Stafford to offer his support, while Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale announced the review of the transfer decision and said ministers by law do not get involved in inmate security classifications.
In the House of Commons, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer called on Trudeau to have the decision reversed, saying McClintic was guilty of “horrific crimes” and had bragged about stomping on the face of a fellow inmate at Grand Valley.
“I will tell you one thing I know about this facility: it is not the right place for McClintic,” he said. “She deserves to be behind bars … this is completely inappropriate.”