The mother of eight-year-old Victoria Stafford says her disappearance should be treated as an abduction, as police continue to search for the girl a week after she vanished in Woodstock, Ont.
Police are currently treating the case as a missing persons investigation, and have noted that no signs of foul play have been found.
But Victoria's mother, Tara McDonald, says she believes someone took her child.
"They took my child," McDonald said Wednesday. "So, I mean, I wish it would be treated as an abduction, because it is."
Earlier in the day, Const. Laurie-Anne Maitland of the Oxford Community Police told reporters that while many tips have poured in, none have been substantial enough to push the investigation forward.
"We continue to search properties, to search business compounds and areas to find some kind of evidence that can hopefully lead us to finding Tori," she said.
Victoria, known as "Tori" by her close friends and family, was last seen on April 8, walking with an unidentified woman at around 3:30 p.m. after school.
The two were spotted on grainy video surveillance footage.
Police have been unable to identify the woman in the video, who has long, dark hair and appears to be in her early twenties. Tori seems to know the woman and appears to be going with her willingly.
Neither of Tori's estranged parents recognized the woman in the video either.
The Toronto Star reports that both Rodney Stafford and Tara McDonald have now taken lie-detector tests, and their previous relationships are being scrutinized.
The Star cites friends of Stafford and McDonald as saying they took the tests over the Easter weekend.
Oxford police have not commented on the polygraph test results, or whether the investigation is now focusing on their previous partners.
Criticism
Investigators came under criticism on Tuesday from a U.S. organization that questioned the amount of time that passed before police reported the girl missing.
In the U.S., police must report a missing person to the FBI within two hours.
Maitland said Tuesday that police acted as quickly as possible.
By midnight on the day Tori went missing, police in other jurisdictions had been notified, and a media release went out at 3 a.m.
Elliot Ferguson, who works for the Woodstock Sentinel Review newspaper, told CTV's Canada AM that there was no sense of widespread urgency until the day after Tori disappeared.
"We did hear reports on our radio scanner late that night of a lost girl in that area, and the reports over the radio scanner didn't sound urgent so we didn't think anything of it," he said.
"It wasn't until the next morning when we came in to start the day that we saw the fax that had come across from the police."
Maitland insisted that Victoria's case has been a priority for police in the region since the first moment she was reported missing.
Police have been criticized for not issuing an Amber Alert -- an urgent bulletin notifying the public and the media when a child has been abducted.
In order for police to issue an Amber Alert, the following three criteria must be met, according to Ontario Provincial Police:
- The child must be under 18 years of age.
- Police believe the abducted child is in imminent danger.
- There is enough information about the abductor and or suspect's vehicle to believe that an immediate broadcast alert would help locate the child.
Police halted the full ground search for Tori on Monday, though a group of local residents have continued to look for any clues, and police are actively investigating the case.
Maitland said police are hopeful Victoria is still alive because the search "has not located something that would lead us to believe foul play may be a factor."
With a report from CTV Toronto's Austin Delaney
