The father of Tori Stafford, a nine-year-old Canadian girl who was brutally murdered in 2009, is “sick” over his daughter’s killer being moved to an aboriginal healing lodge from a maximum security prison.
Rodney Stafford was not informed of the decision to transfer Terri-Lynne McClintic to the Saskatchewan facility. When he found out, he wasn’t happy about the decision.
“It made me sick, to be quite honest,” Rodney told Global News Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Official Opposition Conservatives demanded that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reverse that decision. Trudeau found it “upsetting” that Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer would raise the issue.
Rodney wants to bring his objections home to Trudeau by with a Nov. 2 protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. He told Global News that if he has a chance to see Trudeau prior to the protest he would tell him, “Just please take a good look [at the decision]. This could affect any one of your Canadians as well as you.”
Canada’s Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott backed that decision Thursday in the House of Commons during the daily Question Period.
Philpott said healing lodges are “proven to provide restorative justice” for their Indigenous population. But it is unclear why McClintic was selected to stay at the facility that is meant only for First Nations use when the convicted murderer is apparently not aboriginal.
Nekaneet First Nation Chief Alvin Francis, who has administrative authority over the lodge, did not comment on McClintic’s ethnicity but did suggest her placement in his facility was unsettling. “It is quite shocking because of the crime,” he said at a news conference.
Rodney told Global News that the decision to move McClintic is even more troubling, given that the woman wasn’t being recognized for good behavior. She pleaded guilty to assaulting another prisoner at the Kitchener, Ontario, penitentiary, where she was previously doing time.