Hannah Clarke inquest: Fear of estranged husband Rowan Baxter revealed

Hannah Clarke was terrified of her moody, violent and controlling husband Rowan Baxter. She tried desperately to shield her kids from the worst of it, but evidence before the inquest into her death shows she couldn’t always succeed, write Kate Kyriacou and Vanessa Marsh.

Varvara Meli watched from a distance as the little girl got into her father’s car.

Aaliyah Baxter had not wanted to go with him. Her cruel, moody father, who was becoming more and more frightening – losing control at his loss of control.

“Poor Aaliyah. She wasn’t very happy that morning,” Ms Meli told the inquest into the murders of Hannah Clarke and children Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4, and Trey, 3, this week.

“She had opened up to my girls during the day that she wasn’t looking forward to the afternoon.”

Intelligent, feisty and funny, Aaliyah Baxter had learned to stand up to her father. She understood far more than any six-year-old should. She understood her father was cruel to her mother. And he’d hated her for understanding it.

Aaliyah, Hannah Clarke had told her friend and fellow school mum, had been the last straw.

“Aaliyah couldn’t do it any more,” she had said to Ms Vali.

So she had left the man who had terrorised her for more than a decade.

Hannah Clarke with her children Laianah, Aaliyah and Trey.

Ms Meli saw the little girl again the following morning. Aaliyah had made a beeline for her. Could she use her phone? She wanted to speak to her mummy.

“I didn’t ask,” Ms Meli said. “I just gave her the phone.”

The call was short. Quiet words of reassurance. She was OK. She would see her mummy this afternoon. Perhaps she wanted the comfort of her mum’s voice. Or perhaps she wanted to comfort her mum. Aaliyah was like that. The wisest little girl they had ever known.

It is too difficult to listen to the evidence of Baxter’s treatment of his own children. So it helps to picture those last weeks – the time they spent away from him.

Those happy, chaotic days with “Nee Nee and Pa” in a house too small for them all. A house of love and laughter, of noise, toys on the floor and cuddles with Lloyd and Sue.

A house where Hannah, having escaped a lifetime of control, an “oppressive regime”, reverted back to one of the children – luxuriating in having her parents wash her clothes, cook her meals.

Hannah Clarke and Rowan Baxter.

Hannah Clarke, bright, bubbly, full of love and laughter, met Rowan Baxter when she was 19 and he was 30. At the time, he was married and living with his first wife and son. He was charming back then. He spun them a story of a loveless marriage that he had stayed in for the sake of his child.

Later, after Hannah left him, he would tell her that she needed to have a think about limiting his access to the children. Had his last wife defied him like that, he would have taken his son and killed him.

He maintained the charming facade until Aaliyah was born. And then he changed.

“He would belittle me in front of people at the gym,” Sue Clarke told the inquest this week. “He would call me names, he would say ‘nobody asked you to be here’.”

Things got worse after Laianah. The kids became pawns. His way of punishing Hannah or her parents. If he was in a bad mood, he would ban sleepovers with Lloyd and Sue.

Despite his behaviour, they agreed to invest in the gym he wanted to open. They hadn’t done it for him. They would do anything for their daughter.

Sue had been there one day and Baxter was supporting her during an exercise. He dropped her, splitting her face open.

“He laughed at me and told me to harden up, that it happens all the time if you play football,” she told the court. He kept laughing as the blood ran down her face.

Gym members were uncomfortable. His laughter was inappropriate, they told him. “He lacked empathy with everybody,” she said.

Sue wasn’t afraid of him. But if she took him to task, Hannah paid.

“Please Mum, apologise,” she would call Sue in tears.

“She’d be so distraught,” Sue told the court, “that I’d have to ring and apologise.”

Hannah Clarke’s mum Sue leaves the inquest in Brisbane. Picture: David Clark

Behind closed doors, Baxter had gained control of every element of Hannah’s life. He controlled what she wore, who she spoke to. He monitored her phone. They shared the same Facebook account.

She was not allowed to wear pink. Pink was for little girls. She was not allowed to wear shorts – that was just flashing her legs to other men. He belittled her, called her fat.

He monitored her every movement. If he had told her to be home from work at a certain time, Hannah would frantically close the gym in a mad panic so he wouldn’t accuse her of cheating.

Every step she took, every moment, she took on eggshells. If Hannah did better than Baxter at the gym, he would claim she cheated. He’d post derogatory comments on the gym’s Facebook page. He’d spend hours training, trying to gain more fitness, to be better than her.

He played the alpha, but in reality he was pathetic, insecure, unable to manage a bank account or pay a bill.

He was a useless businessman. He drove clients away with his aggressive manner.

When bullying his wife no longer gave him satisfaction, he moved on to his children. It was another way of upsetting Hannah.

He’d cancel outings to blame it on her. It was “Mummy’s fault” they couldn’t go. He’d play with them too roughly, film it and bizarrely post it to Facebook – oblivious that others might find it disturbing to see a full-grown man rugby tackle a little girl.

Rowan Baxter playing with his children. Photo: Facebook

On one occasion, Sue told the inquest, Baxter posted footage of himself lowering the children into an ice bath. Trey had been two. He held him in the freezing water up to his neck.

“Rowan held him … right up to his neck in there,” Sue said. “And Trey was frantic. His eyes were bulging in his head with fear. And he thought that was funny enough to post.”

He’d hit Aaliyah with a cushion so hard, she had smashed into the door frame and split her head open. They had had to take her to hospital.

In November 2019, Hannah and Baxter were due to compete in a CrossFit competition. She’d been training well. Friends had told Baxter that Hannah had the makings of an elite-level CrossFit competitor. One suggested he was holding her back from getting proper coaching. He was furious. Furious and jealous.

Baxter pulled out of the competition and told Hannah she should do the same. She refused.

On the day she was due to compete, he forced her to go and run classes at their gym rather than rest up and get ready for the day ahead.

She got home at 7am to find Baxter and the children gone. She tried calling and messaging. He ignored her. Her terror grew. She was so frightened she started vomiting. Where was he? Would he hurt them?

Finally, she noticed their beach bags were missing. She calmed herself. He’d taken them to the beach.

She left for the CrossFit contest.

“These are the f---ed up games my husband plays,” she told gym friend Lynne Kershaw.

“He’s doing this to sabotage me. He won’t return my phone calls.”

Ms Kershaw knew all about Baxter. She told it to Hannah straight.

“I don’t know what kind of a person would do this,” she said. “Somebody who loved you wouldn’t do this.”

Lynne Kershaw gave evidence at the inquest into the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her three children. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

That was the Friday. On the Friday night, there was an event for elite athletes. Aaliyah’s idol, weightlifter and CrossFit champion Tia-Clair Toomey would be there and Hannah had promised she could go.

Baxter, in his tantrum, had told Hannah no. Hannah had told Ms Kershaw she was heading home to get Aaliyah and would be back. No matter what, she said, that little girl was going to see her hero.

When she saw Hannah again, Hannah was alone. Angry red marks stood out on her upper arms.

“It’s from ring muscle-ups,” ­Hannah had told her. Ms Kershaw knew she was lying.

On Sunday, Ms Kershaw bumped into the whole family. Baxter was carrying an Esky and playing the dutiful dad while Hannah competed. Ms Kershaw wasn’t fooled.

Lewis Bartlett managed The Athlete’s Foot at Capalaba. He’d known Hannah and Baxter for years.

Baxter was a non-paying customer. A personal trainer who’d demand new shoes at regular intervals, complain about free products and lecture them on how to run the store.

When Baxter, his business struggling, told Hannah to get another job to bring in more income, she picked up shifts at The Athlete’s Foot. Baxter was, inexplicably, angry at her for it.

At work, Hannah confided in Mr Bartlett. He was shocked. On the surface, they looked like such a happy couple. She was leaving him, she said. On Tuesday. Then it was the next Tuesday. Then the next. She was scared.

Nicole Brooks helped her do it. They’d been best friends since they were girls. On the day Hannah left, Ms Brooks picked up one of the children early from school, then sat in the car outside Hannah’s house.

She acted as the lookout while inside, Hannah frantically packed her things before leaving Baxter a note.

Police on the Camp Hill where Hannah Clarke and her children were killed by Rowan Baxter. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

They stayed with her that night, then went to the Gold Coast to stay with Hannah’s brother Nat.

Then, when she felt safe, they moved in with Lloyd and Sue.

They were happy days, those last days. Friends saw Hannah dressing differently. She was lighter, happier.

But her problems had not left her.

Baxter closed the gym. Told his friends she’d “run off with another man”, that she’d stolen the children.

Some of those friends texted and called her. Give him back the children, they demanded. Go back to him, they said. Hannah had been so hurt.

He stalked her. He planted recording devices in her house and car and rang her boss, insisting he sack her. He signed a parenting agreement and then changed his mind.

He posted photographs of his children on his Facebook page, playing the victim.

He used his access to the children to terrorise her, refusing to bring them back at the time they had agreed to. He stole his middle daughter’s comfort toy and refused to give it back.

Aaliyah cried and cried when forced to see him.

“Why are you making me, Mummy?” she’d ask a heartbroken Hannah.

The little girl was so distressed, Hannah bought her a GPS watch with text-messaging capabilities. She had to keep that function a secret, even from her little sister, Hannah explained. Hannah would not text her little girl. They didn’t want Baxter to see.

“If you’re ever worried,” she told Aaliyah, “you lock yourself in the toilet and you can message me whenever you want.”

On Boxing Day, Baxter snatched Laianah from a park and fled with her to NSW.

Police worked tirelessly to find the little girl, then served Baxter with a domestic violence order and told him to stay away.

Hannah Clarke with her little boy Trey.

Despite this, Hannah wanted Baxter to maintain a relationship with his children. He kept seeing them and kept using them to terrorise her.

One day, he dropped Trey back to Hannah at Lloyd and Sue’s.

Sue watched through the window as her daughter walked out to the car, spotted something on the back seat and started grabbing and screwing up pieces of paper.

Baxter had printed out photographs of Hannah in her lingerie. That’s what he was going to use in court to prove she was a bad mother, he told her. Sue watched as Baxter grabbed Hannah by the arm, twisted it behind her and pushed her up against the car.

She bolted outside.

“You’re in breach!” she yelled at him. “Get out of here. I will call the police!”

Baxter glared at her. “Moll,” he said. He had twisted Hannah’s arm so badly that he had come close to breaking it.

Baxter was charged with breaching a domestic violence order. He only spoke to his children over FaceTime after that and spent the calls sobbing into the camera.

The children didn’t understand.

“It made the kids really uncomfortable,” Hannah told her best friend Ms Brooks on the afternoon of February 18, after one such call.

“It wasn’t a normal sob. I actually felt bad for him. I don’t like seeing people hurting.”

She was all compassion and empathy, Hannah. Even the man who’d terrified and terrorised her, the man who’d told her what to wear, who’d assaulted and raped her, got her compassion.

The following day, Rowan Baxter killed them all.