‘I fell to the floor, screamed’: Hannah Clarke’s lawyer reveals guilt that haunts her
Hannah Clarke’s lawyer Kelli Martin has revealed the moment she found out her client and children had been killed in a crime that rocked the nation, and the guilt that continues to haunt her.
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Kelli Martin knows exactly when she learned how cruel the world can be.
She had long experienced its horrors with her job as a family criminal defence and domestic violence lawyer exposing her to every detail of many heinous and sickening crimes.
So the Brisbane mother-of-two, 40, had come to expect the worst.
But on this day, the morning of February 19, 2020, Martin learned about an evil she was not prepared for.
Martin had just got back to her law firm, KLM Solicitors, where she is managing partner and founder, after chairing a board meeting for domestic violence charity the Red Rose Foundation.
Throughout the morning, she caught news that a woman and her three children had been murdered but never heard their names.
“When I got back to the office one of my colleagues said to me, ‘You know who that is, right?’” she recalls.
“I fell to the floor, sobbed and I screamed.”
The woman was Martin’s client, Hannah Clarke, 31, and the children were Hannah’s kids, Aaliyah, six, Laianah, four, and Trey, three.
Hannah and her children were killed by her estranged husband, Rowan Baxter, who also died from a self-inflicted knife wound on the day.
They were killed by the man Martin had been working hard to protect them from.
Less than two months prior, in late December 2019, Martin received a call from Hannah asking for her help. Baxter had just taken Laianah.
“She was frantic, she had a child taken but was still very level-headed, she was always very level-headed and composed. She wanted advice on the quickest way to get her back,’’ Martin says.
“She was my client for maybe six or seven weeks, such a short period of time but a very intense time. We would message each other or speak to each other nearly every day.”
As a wife and mother of two daughters aged six and eight, it was always going to be tough not to feel the impact of that tragedy deeply.
It rattled an entire nation. Hannah was also the first client Martin had lost and the guilt was overwhelming.
“How did I not see this coming? How could I have done this differently? What did I not do right? How have I just lost someone?” Martin says.
“That was my initial response, I think everybody blames themselves; what could I have done differently, how could I have saved people?”
The questions kept swirling around her mind but she knew that was never going to bring them back.
“You realise you can’t feel like that anymore and you need to do something about it. I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again.”
Martin has dedicated her career to understanding behaviours, learning ways to support victims, and calling for education to improve the system. She has picked up prestigious awards for
her work in an industry she says she fell into in her 20s.
As a child, law was never on the cards for Martin, who dreamt of becoming a doctor.
She was born in Manchester, England, and migrated to Australia with her family when she was nine.
Martin grew up by the beach on the Sunshine Coast with her parents and brother – a photographer/musician now based in Melbourne – living a simple and happy life.
After school, she started a degree in biomedical science but quickly realised that wasn’t for her.
She moved to Brisbane, applied for various degrees and, to her surprise, got in to law at Queensland University of Technology.
The next years were spent studying, then working and so began her rise through the ranks in law.
She practised in various fields including personal injury law (“which I hated”) and different firms before finding her passion in family law.
At 32, she opened her own law firm when her first child was just nine months old.
It started with one office in Nundah, in Brisbane’s north, and one other staff member.
Now, she has four offices across Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast and a team of 28 people.
As she built her business, she was also juggling her personal life; childbirth, two divorces and navigating motherhood and a new business in an unforgiving industry.
“I came back to work when my second child was five weeks old; I had the kids in the back of courtrooms in prams,” Martin says. But she knew it was where she was meant to be.
“You have to want to help people, that reallyis the number one thing,” she says.
“You either love or hate family law, a lot of people give it a try and don’t continue after two or three years because it can be very emotionally draining. The people that are coming to you are in some of their darkest days.
“Either people are losing everything, their family, potentially their children, finances they’ve worked hard for, stability, their spouse or you’ve got people that are potentially about to lose their liberty.”
Martin has a fierce resolve, powerful ambition and an unwavering focus and drive. She has to, she says, to do what she does.
To counsel women living in fear for their lives or the lives of their children, to hear their stories of abuse, sexual assault, control and desperate pleas for help.
“I have clients who have been beaten over the head with metal poles, that have been raped, that have been locked in rooms,” she says, beginning a grim list.
“I’ve got clients at the moment that have had cameras installed in their home … had tracking devices put on their cars and phones, (who get) 100 calls a day (from their spouse) to try and find out where they are.
“In some of the early cases I worked on children had been significantly assaulted in one shape or form by a parent or another person in the household.”
Martin also represents perpetrators. She believes in fair representation and likes to think there are no bad people in the world, just people who make bad choices.
“Everyone is entitled to a defence, if they’ve got one,” Martin says.
“The majority of people who come across my desk as criminal law clients plead guilty, I would say above 90 per cent.
“I think there is a great deal of work that can be done in the criminal defence sector and making change to people’s lives so they get off the merry-go-round.
“I’ve had a couple of clients who have completely ended up breaking the cycle and gone on to be incredible fathers and mothers.”
Martin sees people at their worst and the worst in people. It’s taught her a few rules of the game; never underestimate or assume, be tough but fair and strive to make change.
“Acting for victims and perpetrators gives me a really wide knowledge base of how the whole system works,” she says.
“There needs to be a lot more work done in educating the judiciary and more senior practitioners on how to deal with victims and perpetrators.
“I understand why people aren’t as willing to dig into their pocket to support charities that might be helping perpetrators but at the end of the day if the government doesn’t do something to help them, we’re never going to end the cycle.”
Her day-to-day duties would likely leave the average person trembling in shock and disgust but for Martin, as stressful as it can be, she truly loves what she does.
“There is never a day I wake up and hate my job, there are outcomes I hate, of course, but I don’t hate what I do. You can be excellent and be successful at anything in the world if you find what you love doing and do it well.”
It does, however, come with a heavy mental and emotional toll, one Martin felt at full force eight years ago.
Just after the birth of her first daughter in 2014, Martin was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She had no idea it could be linked to her job. “I was having anxiety attacks, I would find myself on the floor of the shower sobbing or it would manifest in an anger outburst or I could go really quiet and not talk for days,” she says.
“I had no idea you could get a diagnosis of PTSD from just day-to-day exposure to other people’s trauma.”
Now she knows her limits, sets boundaries, seeks help when she needs and knows what helps her cope.
“The number one thing I would advocate is don’t be too scared to say ‘I need to see someone regularly’, or don’t be afraid to speak to your colleagues,” she says.
“It’s not an area of law you can easily switch off when you come home, you have to learn how to do that.”
Sleep is key, she says, as is eating well, exercising regularly and doing the things that fill your cup. For Martin, that means live gigs with her husband, socialising with friends, pouring a glass of wine and turning up Foo Fighters on blast. “When I’m listening to music, I can forget what is happening in my real world. Anything I can turn the volume up really, really loud and forget, I do often.”
It’s one way to stop the nasty thoughts from creeping into her mind when she’s at home but the best and biggest distractions are her children. “I’m a dance mum,” laughs Martin. “Between my two girls (from a previous marriage) they dance about 20 hours a week.”
It’s a busy life and juggle in their blended family with Martin and her husband having four children between them aged six to 19.
There are days she feels the “mum guilt” stronger than others. The days she’s in court and not at a school event, or stuck at work and missing family dinners at home. “The mum guilt is real, everybody gets it but just remember what you’re doing it for and the role model you’re creating for your kids,” she says.
“I want them to see that you can do this and be a good mum at the same time and contribute to a better community for us all.”
Recently, Martin’s caseload has predominantly become domestic violence matters and, in her words, “I seem to be the
go-to solicitor for high-risk domestic violence cases now. “I have got other clients at the moment that … are in dire positions.”
It’s a dark and long game but Martin is all in.
She knows her purpose and exactly what keeps her going.
“I can help save people,” she says.
“I have a client at the moment who said to me, by your advice, you saved my life.”
So when the darkness takes over, evil is unmasked and the stories don’t end the way she hoped, she gives herself a reminder.
“It’s what I was put here to do,” Martin says.
“If I’m not helping people, I’m not contributing to a better world.”
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