Hannah and her children Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4, and Trey, 3, were ambushed by her estranged husband Rowan Baxter in their car on the morning school run, when he doused them in petrol and set them alight in the Brisbane suburb of Camp Hill on February 19, 2020.

The children died at the scene while Hannah, despite having burns to most her body, got out of the fiery wreck and told first responders what happened before she was taken to hospital where she died that afternoon.

For her parents Lloyd and Sue Clarke, that final act reinforced their daughter’s warrior spirit.

“[I’m] proud and not surprised, she was always very strong,” Ms Clarke said.

“And she would have wanted to make sure he paid, really made sure he paid.”

Baxter died near the car from self-inflicted stab wounds.

Mr Clarke said there was “still demons” as the couple worked through their immeasurable loss, but that going for long walks at nearby Whites Hill Reserve and raising awareness about Hannah’s story had become key parts of the healing process.

“It’s still difficult — I think it’s getting harder now, knowing that they’re not coming home and we’re not going to see them again.

“Thank goodness for social media, we get little pop-ups of them. I couldn’t handle that at first, but now I like to sit there and look at them.”

Hannah subjected to controlling abuse for years

Hannah and the children had been staying with Sue and Lloyd Clarke when they died, and had just driven out of the driveway when Baxter jumped into the car after waiting for them to leave the house.

Hannah suffered years of psychological abuse and controlling behaviour at the hands of Baxter, and the most recent separation was her latest attempt to get a fresh start.

“He always knew where Hannah was, he would turn up at places quite expectedly, and she would notice her handbag or phone had been rifled through,” Ms Clarke said.

“He would ring her when she should be locking up the gym, to see if she had locked up on time and if there was anyone there with her.

“He would control what she wore. Hannah was never allowed to wear pink or shorts, which was hard when she did CrossFit.

“He would also control what the children did, and he would force sex on Hannah every night and if she didn’t comply he would sulk for days.”

Coercive control is a type of non-physical domestic abuse characterised by controlling behaviour including emotional, mental and financial abuse, isolation, intimidation, sexual coercion and cyberstalking.

The Clarke family have set up the Small Steps 4 Hannah Foundation, a charity to help support domestic violence services, educate the community about coercive control, and push for the behaviour to be criminalised nationally.

“There’s a lot of humiliation and intimidation as well. They put it onto their partners which then makes it hard for them to leave,” Mr Clarke said.

“Hannah found it very hard to leave, she tried three or four times in that last year … he convinced her she would be a bad mother if she left and that it was bad for the children, so very manipulative.

“It’s a pattern … and that’s the worst thing, it’s not physical, there’s no marks so it’s very hard to pick.”

The Clarkes are hoping a checklist can be used to identify the pattern of behaviour and red flags within relationships.

Clarke murders strengthen Government’s resolve for new laws

Attorney-General and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence Shannon Fentiman said the Queensland Government would make coercive control a crime within the next four years, and that it was her top priority

“I was completely shocked by the murder of Hannah and her three children, it was an absolute tragedy,” she said.

“It really did harden my resolve and the Government’s resolve that day to do everything we can to tackle domestic violence.

“It [coercive control] is our biggest predictor of intimate partner homicide so if we can intervene earlier, identify this very dangerous behaviour, hopefully we can save lives.”

The issue is also on the agenda in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Northern Territory, but no coercive control laws have been passed except for in Tasmania, which criminalised elements of the behaviour such as intimidation, economic and emotional abuse in 2004.

In 2015, England and Wales became the first nations in the world to legislate against “controlling or coercive behaviour” in an intimate or family relationship, making it punishable by up to five years in jail.

Scotland followed in 2018, with its laws drafted to reflect the gendered pattern of intimate partner violence and behaviours between ex-partners.

The laws have been described as the “gold standard” and are likely to be the standard upon which the Queensland Government bases its draft legislation.

“This has only happened in a handful of jurisdictions in the world … and the learnings so far is that widespread and sustained training is necessary,” Ms Fentiman said.

“Consultation will be critical, this is so important and we want it to work to make sure we can hold these perpetrators to account, so we will be working with police, our prosecutors, domestic and family violence services, and legal experts.

“There are offences in the criminal code already, like stalking, that require one or more instances of behaviour so I’m quite confident that if we do great consultation with community, with survivors and people like Hannah’s parents, we will get this right.”

Fentiman said safeguards would be put in place to ensure the offences were not used against victims and that the Government hoped to begin community and stakeholder consultation in coming weeks.

Laws could backfire on disadvantaged victims

Griffith University law school senior lecturer Zoe Rathus said some laws could work against Indigenous and CALD women because they have trust issues with the legal system and difficulty communicating in the justice system.

“There are many First Nations women in prison for breaches of domestic violence orders, so an order was taken out against them, and then they are seen as the one who’s breached it, they end up in prison.

“Some of it comes down to mistrust and lack of confidence in the system itself by the women, so for them to put forward their case as a victim is very difficult.

“And with many women from diverse backgrounds, they may have a white Caucasian Australian-born husband, who completely understands the Australian legal system enough to feel that he can safely say things about her that will be seen as negative in the eyes of the law.”

Rathus said widespread consultation would be essential to help safeguard the laws, and that once introduced significant resourcing and training would be required to ensure the offence was well understood.

“Training for police, training for prosecutors, for defence lawyers, for judges and what will it mean in a family law matter, so there’s a massive amount of training,” she said.

“A lot of money has go into making an offence like this have a likelihood of success and so that money doesn’t go somewhere else, it doesn’t go into refuges, or men’s programs.”

‘We want laws that have teeth’

Beyond DV founder Carolyn Robinson said she would like to see detailed consultation with stakeholders to ensure robust coercive control laws were put in place.

“We have to take our time, we want laws that have teeth,” she said.

“Because with coercive control what we do see happening here with the women we support is that two, three, four years after they’ve left their abusive relationship coercive control is still alive and well in their relationships with their ex-partners — and that very often involves the children.

“So if that was criminalised, perhaps then those sorts of behaviours could be looked at as DVO breaches.”

Commissioner Katarina Carroll said the Queensland Police Service supported coercive control becoming an offence and was already training officers in how to identity it and gather evidence.

“This is one of the greatest challenges, so we’re looking at various models across the world, and we’ve looked at Scotland where it’s about collecting the evidence as efficiently and effectively as possible, and presenting that in court,” the Commissioner said.

“It’s not just behaviours; it’s texts, it’s telephone calls, it’s emails, it might be financial records — so it’s identifying early what needs to be collected, collecting that as efficiently as we can and making sure that is presented in court.

“We have to spend as much time as possible looking at the best model.”

– ABC / state political reporter Rachel Riga