Rafferty transfer to be examined

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says he will examine the transfer of Victoria Stafford’s murderer Michael Rafferty from a maximumsecurity prison to a medium-security facility — a review that will take place just weeks after Rafferty’s accomplice Terri-Lynne 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 kidnapping, sexual assault and firstdegree murder of Tori Stafford. He and McClintic abducted her from outside her school in Woodstock, Ont., in 2009, assaulted her, and beat her to death with a hammer.

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

“It has come to my knowledge as of today that Michael Rafferty — the man responsible for all actions the day of April 8th, 2009. The abduction, brutal rape, murder, and concealing of evidence, was transferred from his maximum security facility to a medium security facility in March!” Stafford wrote in the post, mainly in capital letters.