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FYi Q&A
NAMING DEAD
THE
Professor Sue Black’swork in the field of forensic anthropology has helped convict killers and find justice for victims of war crimes. She talks to FYiabout her work
anthropologist to a British team sent to identify victims of genocide in Kosovo. Her work helping to exhume and identify more than 1,000 bodies led to Slobodan Milosevic becoming the first head of state to stand trial for crimes against humanity. It also earned her an OBE.
T In 2004, Sue travelled to Thailand in the
wake of the Boxing Day tsunami and helped identify the British victims who were among the 200,000 dead. Her investigations in Iraq helped convict Saddam Hussein, while her work in the UK has also been instrumental in securing the convictions of serial killers such as Fred and Rosemary West as well as in child sex abuse cases. She is currently director of the Centre for
Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee and is a founder and director of the Centre for International Forensic Assistance. She is founder and past president of the British Association for Human Identification and adviser to the Home Office and Interpol on issues pertaining to forensic anthropology in disaster victim identification (DVI). Apart from appearing in History Cold Case Sue has also worked in radio. She lives with her family near Aberdeen.
HE RECENT BBC2 series History Cold Casemay have made Dundee Professor Sue Black something of a household name but she is no stranger to high-profile forensic investigation.
In 1999, Sue acted as the lead forensic
How did you get started in forensic anthropology and the field of human identification? I went to university not knowing what I wanted to study other than something 'biological'. I found human anatomy utterly absorbing in terms of study and my fate was sealed in the discipline. However when it comes to research I have a morbid fear of rodents and so any exploration in that realm was completely off limits. The only other thing available to me was the study of human bones - perfect! My first forensic case came during my PhD studies and at that point, I knew that was what I wanted to do.
What advice would you give to trainee doctors who are interested in your field of work? Anatomy is a core subject for all medical and paramedical disciplines but the 'forensic' element gives you an added dimension of investigative skills, attention to detail, importance of accurate recording and of course never going beyond your sphere of experience. Any element of forensic medicine is good for trainee doctors as it develops a very useful set of skills that will serve them well in whatever aspect of medicine they may choose to specialise.
What are the best and worst things about your work? The best is that you play your part in securing justice for victims. The worst is that you have to bear witness to the inhumanity that man
PHOTOS: BBC/SHINE TV LTD/ALAN PEEBLES
bestows on his fellow man. It can be very sobering especially when working on genocide cases such as Kosovo or in much of the current work in which we are involved which is identification of perpetrators of child sexual abuse.
Which of your professional experiences is the most memorable? Kosovo was unquestionably a turning point for me in my career. It was memorable for so many different reasons. We were still technically working in a war zone so security and co- operation with the military was a new dimension to my working environment. The heat and the lack of amenities that we take for granted - sanitation, electricity, running water - really tested ingenuity. The humanity of the survivors was an abiding memory.
How do you cope with witnessing what must be some very harrowing scenes of mass graves and murder? You cope by arming yourself with clinical detachment. You focus on the work that you have to do, retrieval of evidence for courtroom
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