Canberra forensic investigator reflects on 800 crime scenes
Rebekah is a 30-year-old AFP forensic investigator in Canberra. She has attended about 800 crime scenes over six years.
Rebekah is a forensic crime scene investigator with the AFP. She estimates she has walked into about 800 crime scenes: burglaries, assaults, fires, clandestine labs, and homicides.
Some complex scenes take 15 hours at a stretch to process. She has to return for several more days.
Rebekah's job is to slow everything down and photograph the scene. She collects evidence: fingerprints, shoe marks, and trace DNA.
Then specialist teams analyze it. Rebekah now notices fingerprints everywhere, even on her kitchen bench at home.
Sometimes she treats dinner with her family like a crime scene. Rebekah says the work has not made her numb.
Instead, it has made her deeply grateful. "When I go home and have family dinner, I just embrace that that moment's happening," she says.
- 30 years old
- Rebekah's age
- About 800
- Crime scenes attended
- 6 years
- Career duration
- 15 hours at a stretch
- Complex scene processing time
Why it mattersCrime scene investigators see the gap between TV drama and reality. Witnessing trauma changes how they view everyday life.
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