Rodney Stafford says he doesn’t want vengeance against his daughter’s killer. He just wants to feel like the system intended to deliver justice to offenders like Terri-Lynne McClintic isn’t failing their victims.

“If this is something that can happen to an eight-year-old child and there’s no justice for it, then that’s a big issue,” Stafford said in an interview with Yahoo Canada News.

McClintic was convicted in 2010 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for her role in the kidnapping, rape and murder of eight-year-old Victoria ‘Tori’ Stafford in Woodstock, Ont. in April 2009.

Just eight years into McClintic’s 25-year minimum sentence, Correctional Service Canada transferred her from Grand Valley Institution for Women, a women’s prison in Kitchener, to a healing lodge in Saskatchewan.

View photos Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge for Aboriginal Women has been convicted murderer Terri-Lynne McClintic’s home for months. More

Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge for Aboriginal Women aims to rehabilitate incarcerated women using traditional Indigenous teachings, ceremonies and workshops.

Located 150 kilometres from the nearest large city, Medicine Hat, Alta., Okimaw Ohci is a minimum-medium security facility. Offenders live in single and family residential units. Some live there with their children. Each unit includes a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchenette with an eating area and a living room. There are 60 beds, and Terri-Lynne McClintic occupies one of them.

Stafford found out about the move in September this year, nine months after it took place. He said it was mentioned as an afterthought in a discussion with Correctional Service Canada about a parole board request by McClintic for additional day leaves.

“…Those two little girls, the dead one and the killer, have melded in my mind somehow. One can’t be saved or helped or even made half-whole. Maybe the other can be.” – Christie Blatchford, National Post

“I would like for her to go back to her cell where she belongs. Victoria spent the last three hours of her life scared out of her tree,” he said. “Ultimately, she was tortured and raped and murdered. Where do Terri-Lynne’s rights…override the victim’s?”

The news left him feeling angry, re-victimized and failed by Canada’s justice system. So he quickly set to work to gain public support for a reversal of the transfer.

“I would have been totally fine if Terri-Lynne had gone in, done her time, did the programs she needed to rehabilitate her life the way you’re supposed to in an institution,” he said. “And if we had been able to have our say and just be a part of things.”

When the transfer was reported by the London Free Press on Sept. 25, it sparked outrage across the country.

Can you rehabilitate a murderer?

View photos National Post column by Christie Blatchford calls for rehabilitation of Tori Stafford’s killer More

Amid cries to return the convicted child murderer back to a traditional detention centre, National Post writer Christie Blatchford advocated for tolerating the transfer in a divisive column.

Citing McClintic’s own ghastly childhood — raised by an alcohol-addicted exotic dancer and ferried from one institution to another — Blatchford argued that McClintic was a “damaged creature” whose entire childhood experience was “…to be hurt and ruined.”

“I understand the public outrage. I just can’t share it completely,” Blatchford wrote. “Those two little girls, the dead one and the killer, have melded in my mind somehow. One can’t be saved or helped or even made half-whole. Maybe the other can be.”

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