No justice for Tori Stafford

In 2009, an eight-yearold girl, Tori Stafford, was lured into a car by a familiar woman, an acquaintance of Stafford’s mother. The acquaintance was Terri-Lynne McClintic. McClintic, then 18, was assisting her boyfriend, Michael Rafferty, who wanted to have sex with a child. McClintic agreed to help make that happen.

She lured Stafford, who was walking home from school for the very first time that day, into Rafferty’s car with talk of a puppy. The two drove her to a remote location where the little girl was repeatedly raped and then beaten to death with a hammer. Her body was then dumped in a shallow grave to rot.

Incredibly, the above summary is a sanitized version of Stafford’s final hours. The details that emerged at trial are simply too horrific to be repeated here. But there is one key detail that must be shared: there were opportunities for McClintic to change her mind and save Stafford. She could have stopped the murder, even after the abduction. She had more than one chance to flee with Stafford, to alert someone, to change her mind, to save a helpless child from a violent, gruesome, senseless end.

But she stuck with the plan. And so a young girl was brutally tortured and murdered in a field far from her home.

McClintic was eventually identified as a person of interest thanks to surveillance footage. Taken into custody on an outstanding warrant, she confessed after a series of interviews and turned on Rafferty. Both were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, with no parole for 25 years. McClintic even later claimed, contrary to her earlier statements, that she was the one who wielded the hammer and beat Stafford to death.

So, to review: McClintic chose Stafford. She lured her to the car. She bought the hammer that killed her, and the garbage bags that Stafford was buried in. She was present when Rafferty raped her. And then she beat her to death. None of these events is disputed by McClintic. This is her version of events.

And now she’s getting a break.

She’s still in prison, but describing her as “behind bars” doesn’t quite apply. McClintic has been transferred to a “healing lodge.” A series of these facilities exist in Canada as alternatives to traditional prisons. They’re still within the correctional system, but are intended to provide a different experience for Indigenous Canadians, who are incarcerated at a rate well beyond their share of the population.

Whether Canada should have these facilities to begin with is an awfully good question. The goal is valid, but the execution — a segregated prison system — is appalling. There’s no clear evidence the facilities even succeed at their primary goal, reducing recidivism, with different studies showing wildly diverging outcomes. But these are matters for another day. The important thing for today is to understand that these prisons are vastly more pleasant places to be incarcerated than a normal prison. They’re designed to be. That’s what they’re for.

McClintic was given the most serious sentence possible under the laws of 2010 because her crimes were the most serious our society can conceive of. The sentence was intended to put her away — from Stafford’s family, from other children, from society — for as long as the law allowed, until 2035. Only then would her freedom even become a possibility.

McClintic isn’t being let out. Her freedom is not being restored to her. But her current conditions are selfevidently not what was intended when she was sentenced to life, and not what the Canadian public rightly expects. McClintic herself is not even known to be Indigenous (a family member alleges that McClintic is making it up because she “is very smart and manipulative”). But as it happens, these lodges — created specifically to help the specific cultural challenges of Indigenous offenders! — are not actually limited to Indigenous prisoners. The entire affair is absurdity layered atop grotesque absurdity. It is a perversion of our very notions of justice. That a murderer of such savagery and amorality could be eased into a relatively comfortable and pastoral minimum-security “healing lodge,” a mere eight years into her life sentence, is so shocking that it brings the very justice system into disrepute.

The Liberal government has already said it will review the matter, which is literally the least it could do in the face of rising public outrage. In the meantime, the family of Tori Stafford must again fight for justice for their slain daughter. Meanwhile, at the healing lodge where McClintic has been transferred, other inmates live with their children, a provision intended to prevent families from being torn apart while mothers serve their sentences. This means that McClintic, who confessed to luring a child and beating her to death with a hammer, now lives in a low-security environment among children.

It is hard to know what can even be said in response to such an absolutely appalling state of affairs. Answers coming from the Liberal government that it would be improper to interfere with Corrections Canada — an agency that is unquestionably accountable to the public safety minister — cannot be allowed to suffice. Blithe dismissals by Corrections Canada executives that they’re “comfortable” with their decision and stand by it are simply unacceptable. This development offends the very conscience of our society. The legislators and agencies that work for us should not think it is acceptable to cravenly elude accountability for this. Canadians deserve answers. And Tori Stafford, and the many who grieve for her deserve so, so much better than this.