When Brenda Waudby pulled up the article on her cellphone, she could barely process what she was reading. She can no longer remember the headline, but the words took her back to the most horrifying time in her life. The Hospital for Sick Children. Evidence. Unreliable. âI felt like throwing up,â she said. âIt was like, âOh my God. Here we go again.ââ In 1997, Waudby was a single mom in Peterborough, Ont., recovering from cocaine addiction and the violent death of her 21-month-old daughter, Jenna Mellor, when SickKids pathologist Charles Smith ran a bulldozer through her life. Smithâs flawed opinions led police to charge Waudby for Jennaâs murder. It took years to regain custody of her two other children, clear her name and bring the real killer â Jennaâs 14-year-old babysitter â to justice. Smithâs faulty autopsy analyses tainted more than a dozen cases, including that of William Mullins-Johnson, who was jailed for 12 years after being wrongfully convicted in the 1993 death of his niece.In late April 2007, the province launched the Goudge Inquiry into pediatric forensic pathology in Ontario and Smith. In the months that followed, Waudby was a regular in the public gallery on the 22nd floor of a grey office tower on Dundas St. West, as the evidence untangled a knot of systemic failings at some of the provinceâs most trusted institutions, including SickKids.âI was really hopeful that theyâd learned,â she said. âI was hopeful that the systems had corrected their issues.âThat hope faded with news of Motherisk, another scandal involving a SickKids doctor, flawed forensics, marginalized parents and families torn apart.âItâs like we were disregarded. All we went through, that didnât matter,â she said. âHow could they forget so quickly?âTen years after the Goudge Inquiry got underway, an investigation int ...
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