"With the help of a team of lawyers, Waudby's lawsuit against disgraced pathologist Charles Smith, the Peterborough Lakefield Community Police Service, the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, the CAS and others was settled earlier this year for an undisclosed amount. In 2010, the provincial government announced that victims of Smith would each receive up to $250,000 in compensation.
Her pale blue eyes focused, Waudby wants a fresh start. She wants Justine - who lost her childhood the night her sister was killed, faced taunts at school and still jumps at strange sounds - to never have to worry again. She wants her son, now 12, to never have to worry, period. There are still hard times - such as when Waudby discovered the Hospital for Sick Children still had part of Jenna's rib cage, even after the provincial inquiry had concluded. "What was going to happen to it?" she asks. "Were they going to throw it in the garbage? Burn it? She was whole, intact, when she went there. They cut her up and kept a piece of her.""
LISA FITTERMAN: MORE MAGAZINE;
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PAGE ONE: THE ACCUSED:
"The memory unspools like a reel of film: It is the spring of 1997, and Brenda Waudby is walking her seven-year-old daughter to the park near their Peterborough, Ont., home," the November 2011 MORE Magazine article by Lisa Fitterman begins, under the heading, "Brenda Waudby: A victim of disgraced pathologist Charles Smith."
(A sub-heading reads, " Ask Brenda Waudby what could be worse than the death of your own child. She'll tell you it's having everyone around you, including the police, believe you were responsible. A victim of disgraced pathologist Charles Smith speaks out.)
"She can hear the neighbourhood kids calling out to one another and she'd love it if Justine, shy and diffident, got to play with them," the article continues.
"But when she and Justine get there, the kids begin to leave, hurried away by parents and grandparents. It is a mass, mad exit as everyone flees from the woman they consider the mom from hell. Within minutes, the park is empty. Silently, Justine looks up at her mother.
"It's okay," Waudby remembers saying, even though she knew it wasn't. But she couldn't tell her child that people can be cruel and quick to condemn; that, to many, she was guilty of being the notorious Brenda Waudby, a former coke addict, a bad and scary mom who likely killed Justine's baby sister. How else to explain the death of 21-month-old Jenna on a cold night that January?
Waudby shakes herself, the memory filed away but not forgotten. "All that stuff trickled down to my family," she says, fierce and angry. "Nobody believed anything that came out of my mouth. There I was, portrayed in the media as a child killer - and I hadn't even been charged. Still, I held my head up high. Because I had Justine and I had to survive for her."
Flash back to Oct. 3, 1996. It is the day Waudby decides to change her life and kick cocaine. She is tired of fighting with her boyfriend, Jenna's father, over such things as who used the last of the drugs the night before, who's responsible for the encrusted dishes in the sink, the rotting food in the fridge and the dirty laundry. During four months of snorting coke and scrambling to get more, she has let everything else slide. But she loves her two girls and she wants what's best for them. So she calls the local branch of the Children's Aid Society (CAS) for help. It is the hardest thing she has ever done, and she can't shake the image of Justine sobbing and waving goodbye from the rear window of the car that takes her daughters away.
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PAGE TWO: THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS:
"We'll be together again," she tells herself. "I promise."
The next few weeks aren't easy. There are the shakes, sweats and nightmares. But by mid-November, the girls come home: Justine, who thought she'd never see her mom again, and baby Jenna, with flaming red hair and a personality to match. Waudby is sober and taking drug tests once a week, the apartment is tidy, and the fridge and cupboards contain proper food and drink. For six weeks, life is good. Then everything goes to hell.
Little in Waudby's hardscrabble life could have prepared her for the loss of Jenna, the long fight to clear her name and the sacrifices she'd have to make to keep Justine and a son born in 1999 (who cannot be named) from disappearing into the foster care system. Growing up the youngest of seven children in a working-class family, with a mom who drove a school bus and a dad who worked at a boat-making company, Waudby was the irresponsible rebel who dabbled in drugs - a pretty girl who would miss curfews and run away. Married at 23, she gave birth to Justine a year later, living large and fast until that day in October when she understood her lifestyle wasn't working anymore.
"When they took my girls away, I quit cocaine in one day," she recalls. "It was that simple. Not that I don't think about it. I do. I'll always be an addict, but the difference is that I'm aware of it. I say no."
On Jan. 21, 1997, only two months after she got her daughters back, Waudby hired a 14-year-old neighbour to babysit while she went out. What happened next is the stuff of newspaper articles, TV clips and a provincial inquiry - a nightmare knit together by a web of lies and flashing red lights. She didn't understand what had happened. All she knew was Jenna had been rushed to hospital. But when Waudby arrived, there was only a body to identify, bruised and battered, recognizable only by her red hair. Later, she learned that the CAS had whisked Justine away - again.
----------------------------------------------------------PAGE THREE; THE PRIME SUSPECT:
As Waudby mourned, the unthinkable happened. Identified by a pediatric pathologist named Charles Smith and a police force that relied on his findings, she became the prime suspect in her own baby's murder. Bereaved, she became a pariah in the community, condemned without being charged and restricted to seeing Justine only during scheduled, supervised meetings.
Meanwhile, Justine didn't understand. She missed her baby sister and sometimes spoke to her as if she were sitting across from her. It broke Waudby's heart. "Honey, Jenna is in heaven. Nobody knows how it happened."
But the police thought they knew. They had Smith's autopsy report, which stated that Jenna had suffered her fatal injuries at a time when Waudby had had access to her. He was an expert in child forensic pathology, on staff at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and the go-to guy in suspicious child deaths.
The knock on the door came early on Sept. 18, nearly eight months after Jenna had died. Waudby knew what was coming. "Please don't do this inside," she begged the officers. "My daughter is here." They didn't listen. Justine became hysterical as an officer read out a charge of second-degree murder against her mom. She screamed, "Why are you taking her from me again?"
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At the police station, Waudby was questioned without the presence of a lawyer. Flustered, she just wanted to get it over with. The officer interrogated her for about half an hour, during which time she claims he pressed and cajoled her. She began to doubt herself, to think that maybe she'd dropped Jenna in her crib on the night of Jan. 20. But even if she had, her baby had simply fallen right back into the crib, she insisted.
The officer exited the room and Waudby was left alone with photos of Jenna's body spread out on the table before her. Her mind raced as she looked everywhere but at the images. How could this happen? She sat there, distraught and unsure, her body slumped from exhaustion and defeat. And when the interrogation resumed in the early afternoon, it took only seven minutes for her to make a statement. Maybe she had dropped her baby in a haze of exhaustion. Maybe she had become frustrated on the night of Jan. 20 because Jenna wouldn't stop crying. Maybe, just maybe, she'd done something bad.
But by the time she told the police what they wanted to hear, Justine was already gone, back into the maze of foster care and twice-weekly
supervised visits.
In October 1998, a year after she was charged, the judge at Waudby's preliminary inquiry ordered her to stand trial - a terrifying step toward a possible life sentence in prison. Out on a $30,000 bond guaranteed by her parents and herself, she continued her fight to get Justine back.
Since the arrest, their meetings had been strained. Waudby didn't know what to say. For her part, Justine felt betrayed and confused. While other kids got to see their parents every day, she had to rely on strangers. At one point, she says she almost convinced herself her mom had killed Jenna, although in her heart, she knew differently.
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PAGE FIVE: ANOTHER HEART BREAKING LOSS;
And so, Waudby and her daughter drifted until the spring of 1999 when the Crown began receiving reports that Smith's work in the case was flawed, that Jenna's injuries would have had to occur within six hours of her death, when Waudby wasn't with her. But Waudby's own words came back to haunt her. Because of the statement she made the day she was arrested, the authorities - the police, Crown Attorney's Office and the CAS - still believed she was guilty of something. They also played on the fact that, come September, Justine would have spent two years in foster care, at which point the CAS could apply for her to become a permanent ward of the Crown and be adopted. Waudby, having just given birth to a son who would be placed temporarily with his father, was faced with a grim choice: wait to go to trial on the murder charge and let Justine disappear forever, or plead guilty immediately to a lesser charge of child abuse against Jenna, be sentenced to probation and then continue her application in Family Court to get her daughter back.
For Waudby, there was no choice; she pleaded to the lesser charge. "I know it's hard for people to understand, but I did what I had to do. I couldn't let Justine go," she explains. "I was willing to plead to whatever I had to, to get a fighting chance to keep her. She is my child."
Waudby knew her name would appear on the province's Child Abuse Register, but at the time she didn't think about the stigma attached to it - how she would have to inform people, such as her kids' teachers and principals, if she wanted to do something like volunteer for a school event. There are no regrets. "If I had to do this all over again, I would in a heartbeat," she insists. "I would plead to something I didn't do to save my children, absolutely."
By August 1999, Waudby had her daughter back and was allowed unsupervised visits with her son. It wasn't perfect - she had to be monitored constantly and answer to CAS workers - but it was better than it had been. Then, six years later, another shock: The babysitter, who cannot be named because he was a minor at the time of the crime, told an undercover police officer he'd sexually assaulted Jenna and poked and punched her. He would eventually plead guilty to manslaughter and be sentenced as a young offender to 22 months in jail.
More than 12 years after she pleaded guilty to the reduced charge, Waudby's name remains on the Child Abuse Register. She is fighting to have it removed.
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PAGE SIX: STARTING OVER AT 46;
Today, Waudby appears older than her 46 years, with the face of a survivor, all sharp lines and bones - plain spoken but intense, as she fights for justice and rebuilds her life. With the help of a team of lawyers, Waudby's lawsuit against disgraced pathologist Charles Smith, the Peterborough Lakefield Community Police Service, the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, the CAS and others was settled earlier this year for an undisclosed amount. In 2010, the provincial government announced that victims of Smith would each receive up to $250,000 in compensation.
Her pale blue eyes focused, Waudby wants a fresh start. She wants Justine - who lost her childhood the night her sister was killed, faced taunts at school and still jumps at strange sounds - to never have to worry again. She wants her son, now 12, to never have to worry, period. There are still hard times - such as when Waudby discovered the Hospital for Sick Children still had part of Jenna's rib cage, even after the provincial inquiry had concluded. "What was going to happen to it?" she asks. "Were they going to throw it in the garbage? Burn it? She was whole, intact, when she went there. They cut her up and kept a piece of her."
Mostly, though, her life revolves around her children (including her son, of whom she now has sole custody). After years of renting, the family of three has just moved from their cramped two-bedroom apartment to an airy new house about 20 kilometres outside of Peterborough, with four bedrooms and a large backyard. It's a place to breathe and put down roots. "I'm buying everything new, including three bedroom suites," Waudby says. "The kids have never had that. It's like a new beginning."
In September, she and Justine started school together. Both are enrolled in programs at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough - Justine, now 22, plans to become a child and youth worker, while her mom, who hasn't been a student in nearly 30 years, is studying to be a paralegal and law clerk. "The legal profession may have made my life a nightmare," she says, "but I want to make a difference in people's lives.
"I'm still standing. I'm still fighting. I'm still here.""
This article first appeared in the November 2011 issue of More.
The article can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
