Blaming the mom
Subtle questions suggest she did not take enough precautions to protect her daughter
Columnist Christie Blatchford says an attempt by an accused sex killer’s lawyers to lay some of the blame on the victim’s mother (right) is less-than-flattering to Canada’s justice system.
Tara Mcdonald is the mother of Tori Stafford, the eight- year- old Woodstock, Ont., girl who disappeared on her way home from school on April 8, 2009, and whose partially naked remains weren’t found for 103 days.
Michael Rafferty is the blocky 31- year- old man accused of first- degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in the little girl’s slaying. He is pleading not guilty; his trial here began Monday.
Dirk Derstine is Rafferty’s lawyer.
These people intersected in Ontario Superior Court Wednesday at Rafferty’s trial in what can only be described as a telling, and less- than- flattering, illustration of the state of defence lawyering in Canada, circa 2012.
Consider the following exchange:
Derstine: “How long would it take you to walk to the school?”
Mcdonald: “Maybe five minutes.”
Derstine: “But you just stayed home and waited [ for Tori to arrive]?” Mcdonald: “Yes.” Or consider this one. Derstine: “Your son is older?” Mcdonald: “Yes.” Destine: “He usually walked with her to keep Tori company? To protect her?” Mcdonald: “Yes.” Derstine: “Did you assume he’d walk home with her [ on the day she went missing]?” Mcdonald: “Yes.” Derstine: “Did you tell him to?” Mcdonald: “Yes.” Derstine: “Did you tell Tori to wait for her brother?”
Mcdonald: “We didn’t discuss it.”
Or how about this one, edited for length a little.
Derstine: “Would you agree your new home was a lot farther away than your previous one?” Mcdonald: “Yes.” Derstine: “In fact, from your former home, you could see them [ the kids] walking to school? You could throw a snowball from the front of that house and it would land on [ school] grounds?” Mcdonald: “Yes.” Derstine, pointing to a photograph of the area: “And you say the new house was only two blocks away [ from the school]?”
Mcdonald: “It looks a lot longer on that board.”
Destine, tracing the route on the photo board: “Wouldn’t you agree it’s about a kilometre?” Mcdonald: “Yep.” And finally, this one. Derstine: “Whose idea was it that she [ Tori] would walk home?” Mcdonald: “Mine.” And the lesson is, nothing and no one is sacred in the defence of an accused person like Rafferty — not the mother who not only had to testify about her daughter’s last morning but also about her own drug addiction, and not the then 10- yearold brother who didn’t walk his sister home that day ( but only because he first walked a younger boy home, as he always did, and because by the time he walked by the school again, minutes later, his sister had been kidnapped).
Derstine spoke in a mild tone as he cross- examined Mcdonald. He was mercifully brief. He was not remotely uncivil.
Yet he managed nonetheless to suggest, slyly and never directly, that she bore some responsibility for what happened, or at the least was a lousy parent.
The lawyer, in fact, laid the groundwork for this approach the day before, when, in his cross- examination of Laura Perry, another mother who was at the school that day, waiting for her own kids, he called her “a prudent parent” because, as he put it, “That’s the safe thing to do.”
The woman who led Tori away that day, and was captured on surveillance video doing so, was Terri- Lynne Mcclintic, who has already pleaded guilty to and been convicted of firstdegree murder for her role in Tori’s death.
Mcclintic was then Rafferty’s girlfriend.
Surveillance video puts Mcclintic and Tori walking away from the school at 3: 32 p. m.
A minute later, it is alleged, the car to which the little girl was taken, where Rafferty allegedly was waiting ( and where his blood and Tori’s were found mingled together on a gym bag), was caught on video heading north, on its way out of town.
Let it be on record that Tori Stafford was effectively snatched almost as soon as she left Oliver Stephens public school that day.
Let it be on record that the kilometre walk home, which in Derstine’s view was so long and so fraught with peril, was on streets familiar to the little girl, in a quiet town of about 35,000, a town so small that when, after Tori’s disappearance, police showed her classmates the security video, the kids were able to not only identify some of the vehicles, but also tell them where the folks driving them lived.
And let it be said that Mcdonald, who is now 33, weathered her appearance in the witness stand with extraordinary dignity.
Led gently through her examination- in- chief by Woodstock Crown attorney Brian Crockett, she admitted she had been using the prescription painkiller Oxycontin for the four years before Tori vanished.
At the time of her disappearance, Mcdonald said, she was attending a local methadone clinic, and had reduced her use, but not stopped completely. When Tori went missing, she began using the drug daily, as much as 80 milligrams a day.
Her boyfriend, James Goris, was using, too, she said, and the two of them had actually met Mcclintic twice, and been to the shack where she then lived with her mother, to buy Oxycontin.
On the second visit, she said, they discovered they had Shihtzu dogs in common — Tori’s, named Cosmo, was the love of her life, and slept with her — and had talked about perhaps breeding Cosmo with one of Carol Mcclintic’s dogs.
Mcdonald even identified her own handwriting, with her number on it, on a piece of paper found in the Mcclintic house.
But she and Goris decided against the breeding idea, and though he went back to the Mcclintic house a few more times to buy Oxy, the Mcclintics were never at their home, and neither Tori nor her brother ever met them.
Mcdonald is a tangibly, visibly, stricken human being. Her mouth is an upside- down U. She is terribly pale.
But she didn’t cry, though she came close a couple of times, blinking hard as she described her lost girl, an electric mix of girlie- girl and tomboy. As she put it, smiling at the memory of Tori, “She’d be outside, in a dress, picking up worms.”
As of March 17, Tara Mcdonald will have been off methadone and Oxycontin, the drug she said “makes you feel comfortable, happy, relaxed,” for six months: She may have miles to go before she sleeps, but she is on her way.