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The victims of Dr. Charles Smith have lived experiences that are difficult to fathom. Accused falsely of killing their children or close relatives based on the pathologist’s misguided evidence, they have risked death in prison, faced the ugliest of name calling and been torn away from their surviving children.

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“You took it upon yourself to destroy my life,” said one, Brenda Waudby, in a victim-impact statement. “You have no idea what it is like to walk down a street and be called a child killer.”

On Tuesday, Dr. Smith himself faced punishment for the first time, as the discipline committee of Ontario’s medical regulator revoked his licence and ordered him to appear before the panel in March to be publicly rebuked for his string of flawed child-death investigations. He was also directed to pay $3,600 to cover costs of the one-day hearing.

For those whose lives he unnecessarily ripped apart, however, the College of Physicians and Surgeons sentence simply did not seem to fit the wrongdoing.“He got a slap on the wrist,” said William Mullins-Johnson, who was awarded $4-million in compensation by the province of Ontario last year after being convicted wrongly of murdering his four-year-old niece — and spending 12 years behind bars.