Janet Smith

Dame Janet Hilary Smith, (born 29 November 1940), styled The Rt Hon. Lady Justice Smith, is an English barrister and former High Court Judge and President of the Council of The Inns of Court. She was the judge who prepared The Shipman Inquiry (a report on the activities of the British serial killer Harold Shipman) and the Dame Janet Smith Review (a report on the activities of the British alleged sex offender Jimmy Savile).

On 21 November 2002, Smith became the fourth woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, but she has since retired from that role. She is a Convenor of the cross-party political movement More United.

Personal life Smith was born in Stockport, Cheshire, and attended Bolton School. She married,

Career

Early career She practised as a barrister for twenty years in Manchester, specialising in personal injury and clinical negligence cases. After being appointed QC in 1986, she was appointed by Lancashire County Council in 1991 to hold a public inquiry into reported abuse of autistic children at Scotforth House in Lancaster. Ann Ebsworth had been the first woman judge on the Queens Bench in 1992 and Smith and Heather Steel soon joined her. As a High Court judge, she was involved in the trials of many notable homicide cases. Smith never found any real motive for Shipman's killings but said, "It is possible that he was addicted to killing. He betrayed his patients' trust in a way and to the extent that I believe is unparalleled in history."

Court of Appeal On 21 November 2002, Smith became the fourth woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, following Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (now Baroness Butler-Sloss, 1988), Dame Brenda Hale (now Baroness Hale of Richmond, 1999) and Dame Mary Arden (2000). In January 2012 she became Treasurer of Lincoln's Inn.

Savile Inquiry

On 11 October 2012, she was appointed by the BBC to lead an inquiry into the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal. She called for evidence from people who were the subject of inappropriate sexual conduct by Savile on BBC premises, or on location for the BBC; people who knew of or suspected such conduct; anyone who raised concerns about Savile's conduct within the BBC; people who worked for or with Savile on programmes at the BBC between about 1964 and 2007, or who were familiar with "the culture or practices of the BBC during that time insofar as they may have been relevant to preventing or enabling the sexual abuse of children, young people or teenagers"; and people who held senior positions at the BBC who may have relevant information. The report, the Dame Janet Smith Review, was published on 25 February 2016.

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