Transfer of murderer Rafferty to be examined

Child killer Michael Rafferty was transferred to a mediumsecurity facility.

OTTAWA— Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says he will examine the transfer of Victoria Stafford’s murderer, Michael Rafferty, from a maximum-security prison to a medium-security facility — a review that will take place just weeks after Rafferty’s accomplice, TerriLynne McClintic, went back to a prison from an Indigenous healing lodge.

“I will examine the facts of this case to ensure that all the proper rules and procedures have been followed and that Canadians are safe,” Goodale said in question period Monday in response to Conservative MP Candice Bergen.

Bergen had asked whether Rafferty was behind bars or “in a cushy healing lodge somewhere in the woods.”

Rafferty was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 in the kid- napping, sexual assault and first-degree murder of Tori Stafford.

He and McClintic abducted her from outside her school in Woodstock, Ont., in 2009, as- saulted her, and beat her to death with a hammer.

Rodney Stafford, Tori Stafford’s father, wrote in a raging Facebook post that he’d learned Monday of Rafferty’s transfer in March, saying he received the information only because he requested it.

“Our children and lost loved ones deserve justice and security (within) our country. I am so ashamed to be Canadian right now,” Stafford said.