7 Dec 2019

Dame Sue Black on life, death and forensics

From Saturday Morning, 10:08 am on 7 December 2019

DNA identification is invaluable for removing the "unkind hope" people have that their lost loved ones will be found alive, says Scottish forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black.

"When there is really no hope, it's an unkind hope. And when we come with the news that it is your son [for example] it's heartbreaking news, but the kindness there is that there's a certainty … and hopefully in the grief process you can move on."

Dame Sue Black

Dame Sue Black Photo: Supplied / Jill Jennings

After years identifying bodies in war and disaster zones, Black has now turned to the hands of the living.

She's developed a system to help identify child abusers by their hands and forearms – which are captured in their own indecent photographs and videos.

Dame Sue Black talks to Kim Hill about life, death and forensics.

Content warning: This interview includes references to child sexual abuse, violence and traumatic death.

Hand identification is done by studying unique vein patterns, skin folds and blemishes.

Dame Black started focusing on its potential after working on a case involving a teen girl who alleged sexual abuse by her father.

The girl's mother didn't believe her, so she set up a webcam in her bedroom. In infrared mode, the camera captured a person entering the room at night.

Although Black's team was able to identify the father's distinctive forearm vein patterns in the infrared video, he was not convicted.

Black was told by a lawyer that the jury disbelieved the evidence because the man's daughter wasn't visibly upset – so she determined to create a stronger identification system.

An 'innocent' verdict is just as much cause for celebration as a 'guilty' one, she says.

"I can't think of anything worse, to be accused of that when you're not guilty. The stigma of that never goes away."

After years working with abuse, violence, death and bodies, Black says she's been "gradually desensitised" over time.

As a child, she'd go deer and rabbit shooting with her father and her teen years were spent "up to my elbows in blood and guts and bone and muscle" while working in a butchery.

Later, as an anatomy student, Black was fascinated by the construction of human bodies.

Yet not everyone thought it wise for her to go into forensics, Black says.

One friend first tried to discourage her, but eventually gave the best advice she's ever been given.

"He said 'Don't own the guilt on any case. You didn't cause it, you're not responsible for it, it's not your job to find somebody innocent or guilty. Your job is find the evidence, retrieve the evidence, analyse the evidence, present the evidence and then go home."

Black says that currently, she's "in the best possible health" considering the nature of her work.

"Somewhere down the line, something may get to me. It may be something very simple. I've seen it in colleagues … I'm always aware of it but I've been very lucky up till now."

She guesses that she'll die around the age of 80 and has specific plans for what will happen to her own post-death body – which will only be carried out if her husband goes first and can't oppose them.

"If I die earlier than I expect I want them to strip everything out of my body that they possibly can. Every organ that can be used to help somebody else live that little bit longer. When I get to an age - probably about 65ish - when the organs I have now are not going to be much use to anybody else … I want my body to be donated to my old department in Dundee.

"I want to embalmed … I want to be dissected. I want them to collect together all the fat and muscle and soft tissue and they can just cremate that because there'll be nothing left anyway. But I then want them to bring all my bones together and I want them to boil the bones down … and I want them to string me up as an articulated skeleton so I can stand in that dissecting room and continue teaching for the rest of my death."

Dame Sue Black is looking for ‘citizen scientists’ to help with her research by contributing images to the world’s first searchable database of the anatomy and variations of the human hand.
You can find more information here.

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