Hannah’s ‘sex every night’ revelation that exposed Baxter’s abusive control
Police footage has captured the moment on Boxing Day 2019 a distraught Hannah Clarke tells an officer her estranged husband has abducted her daughter, as officers have told the inquest into the death of Hannah and her three children more about their encounters relating to the man who killed them.
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The inquest into the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her three children has been shown powerful bodyworn camera footage of the moment she told a police officer her estranged husband had kidnapped their four-year-old-daughter.
The incident happened on December 26, 2019, at a park where Rowan Baxter bundled four-year-old Laianah into his car and drove off, leaving a distraught Hannah behind.
Meanwhile, as the inquest reached its sixth day, a police officer praised for recognising Hannah was in an abusive relationship has revealed thatshe did not think she had enough evidence to be able to take out a protection order that would keep her safe the first time Hannah came to see her.
“With what she told me at that time I didn’t think I’d get any conditions and I would only get a mandatory order at best,” Police officer Kirsten Kent told the inquest.
“I really felt a mandatory order would inflame the situation and leave Hannah in a more vulnerable position than if we hadn’t gone for one.
“I really wanted conditions on the order.”
Sen Const Kent said she would have preferred to be able to get an order that had conditions such as Baxter not being able to approach within 100m of Hannah’s house and that stopped him from contacting her.
“I know we’ve heard he wasn’t particularly smart but he was incredibly sneaky and I really feel like he would have pushed the boundaries of that order as much as he could so I wanted conditions to protect Hannah.”
Sen Const Kent said in her experience, it was easier for police to establish a breach when extra conditions were imposed on an order because generally there’s more evidence of breaches in those conditions.
Sen Const Kent also revealed the moment she realised the situation was serious, during her dealings with Hannah.
Police officers who helped protect Hannah after she left her abusive husband will give evidence today at the inquest into the murders of the Brisbane mother and their three children.
Hannah, Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4 and Trey, 3, were murdered by Rowan Baxter on February 19, 2020, after he ambushed his estranged wife as she drove the children to school.
He doused the car in petrol and set them all alight before stabbing himself in the abdomen.
Hannah had fled her husband about three months earlier following years of controlling and abusive behaviour.
She’d taken out a domestic violence order after Baxter abducted four-year-old Laianah and fled interstate.
He later breached the order by assaulting Hannah.
Footage shows distraught Hannah reporting abduction of her daughter
Senior Constable Luke Erba told the inquest he was working out of Morningside police station on December 26, 2019, when a member of the public approached him in Bulimba to say she believed she’d seen a child being abducted.
“We began driving up towards the cafe on Oxford St … and we were flagged down by Hannah,” he said.
The inquest has been shown body-worn footage of a tearful and highly agitated Hannah Clarke telling police her middle child had been snatched from the street.
Hannah told the officers Baxter “took the middle one” and drove off with her.
“Now he’s telling me he won’t give her back,” she said.
“And now he’s trying to play games with me over the phone.”
Hannah becomes distressed when the officers explain to her that there is little they can do, given they don’t have a parental agreement in place.
“They were in my care. I was doing a good thing by letting them see him,” she said tearfully.
Hannah explained to the officers that Baxter had spent the day before – Christmas Day – with the children and her family with no issues.
She said she’d agreed to meet him on Boxing Day so he could spend more time with them but had explained to Baxter that she wanted an agreement in place before they were allowed to stay with him.
She said she had done this because he kept threatening to not return the children.
“You’re not having them stay with you because you won’t return them,” she said she’d told him.
“Without any orders in place, there’s not a great deal we can do,” one of the officers told her.
“This is so messed up,” a very distressed Hannah can be seen saying, crying, with her hands on her head.
“He’s gotten worse. He’s done a lot of stuff.”
When they ask her why he would have taken one of the children, she replied: “The fact that I left.”
“So there’s been a lot of domestic violence. Not physical violence but emotional, controlling …”
She told them Baxter had told her that she had to bring him the other two children or he was “keeping” Laianah.
She said Baxter had driven away with her daughter in the front seat without a seatbelt on.
“She’s four,” she said.
The police officers are heard trying to call Baxter but they are unable to get through because he has blocked calls from private numbers.
Sen Const Erba said because there was no custody agreement in place, there was little they could do to get Laianah back because Baxter had not committed a crime by taking her.
The court heard Baxter claimed to people that Hannah was dramatising the incident.
“She definitely appeared concerned to me on that date,” Sen Const Erba said of Hannah’s distress.
The officers went to Baxter’s home to talk to him but he was not there.
The inquest heard Baxter called police after abducting his daughter to complain about his estranged wife.
“I’m sick of driving around,” he told a call taker.
“My daughter’s asleep in the back seat. She’s four years old.”
He told police that he couldn’t go home because his ex-wife might try and “grab her”.
The court heard Baxter told police his daughter had got in the car willingly and “jumped in the car seat” – a version at odds with independent witnesses who saw him snatch her.
Baxter told police he was worried Hannah might abduct his daughter and that he had not taken her at the park because “that would be bad”.
“It shouldn’t happen that way,” he said, despite having thrown his four-year-old daughter in the passenger seat unrestrained.
“We hopped in the car and I left,” he told police.
The court heard Baxter was transferred to a men’s help line but he hung up before being connected.
The help line attempted to contact Baxter four times but he appeared to have changed his number.
Police officer who exposed Rowan Baxter’s domestic violence
Sen Const Kent supported Hannah Clarke when she went to the Carina Police Station to report Baxter’s offending.
Her interactions with Hannah have been praised by other witnesses during the inquest, with Hannah’s mother Sue saying Senior Constable Kent helped her daughter to recognise Baxter’s behaviour had been domestic violence.
“Hannah actually felt validated that someone was listening to her,” Mrs Clarke told the inquest on Thursday.
Sen Const Kent, the domestic violence liaison officer at the Carina station, was called to give evidence at the inquest into the deaths of Hannah and her children on Monday.
She said on December 6, 2019, Hannah came to the station wanting to talk to someone about her situation.
“I don’t think she was considering an (domestic violence) application at that point,” Sen Const Kent said.
“I think her mum made her come up to the station. Her mum was worried about her.
“I took her into the statement room and we had a bit of a conversation.”
Sen Const Kent said while she wasn’t “greatly concerned” by what Hannah was telling her at first, she became more worried as she began opening up.
“I remember not being greatly concerned at first and discussing saying not everything is domestic violence, just because they’re not a very pleasant man doesn’t mean it’s necessarily domestic violence,” she said.
“And then she disclosed to me he makes her have sex every night and then I went okay now we’ve got something.”
Sen Const Kent said Hannah said having sex with Baxter was “another chore she has to do at the end of the day”.
Sen Const Kent said over time, Hannah opened up to her more and more.
She said Hannah grew to trust her and knew that she would listen.
The officer said she explained to Hannah that controlling behaviours could be considered family violence.
She said did not think there was enough evidence for an application for a domestic violence order and it did not appear that Hannah wanted one at that point in early December.
But she said she logged the information that Hannah had given her onto the system and referred her to a domestic violence service.
She did not include sexual violence as a high risk factor because Hannah had not fully disclosed Baxter’s behaviour at that point.
She assessed him as “medium” risk.
“I think the way Hannah explained it at the time was she may not have enjoyed it and didn’t particularly want to do it every night but he wasn’t violent when they were having sex,” Sen Const Kent said.
“She was unaware that she was in a domestic violence relationship.”
Sen Const Kent said she saw Hannah a few days later at Carindale shopping centre.
“I knew she worked at Athlete’s Foot and so I walked past … and waved at her,” she said.
“She came up, (and said) ‘what’s wrong, what’s wrong?’.
“(She said) ‘I thought something had happened to the kids’ and she was so fearful.
“Her level of fear was like, I have not seen such authentic fear from an aggrieved before.”
Sen Const Kent said she had only wanted to say hello to Hannah but her level of fear for the children was such that it made her take the situation far more seriously.
She said she told Hannah to come and see her at the police beat office during her lunch break.
When Hannah went to see her in the lunch break, she told Sen Const Kent that Baxter was looking after the children while she was at work.
She revealed how on a previous occasion when she went to pick the kids up from Baxter, he had kept her at the house for “hours and hours” trying to convince her to go back to him. He would not let the children go with her and eventually she had to leave without them.
“She was just so worried that there was no recourse for her getting the kids back when he did have them,” Sen Const Kent said.
“I explained that’s not something the police get involved in.
“So I told her to get some legal advice, get a family lawyer.”
Sen Const Kent said even though she knew there was not much that could be done to help with parenting issues, she called the Vulnerable Persons Unit (VPU) while Hannah was there.
“I was just hoping for an answer or something but they told me what I already knew, that we don’t get involved, that she needs to get some family law orders in place,” Sen Const Kent said.
Sen Const Kent said Hannah’s fear that day conflicted with what she told her on the December 6 meeting when she said Baxter was a good dad and she was not concerned he would harm the children.
She said Hannah’s fear continued to play on her mind and she later again contacted the VPU.
“Probably her fear,” Sen Const Kent said of her reasons for being worried for Hannah and the children.
She again called Hannah after that and told her to keep in touch.
Cop’s fears mandatory order ‘would have left Hannah in a more vulnerable position’
Sen Const Kent said between December 14 to December 26, she was in regular contact with Hannah.
Then, on Boxing Day, Baxter abducted Laianah.
She said at that point, despite not being at work, she reached out to Hannah via email to ask if she had Laianah back.
She said she told Hannah it was time to take out a domestic violence order and asked her to come in the following day.
Hannah came into Carina police station on December 28 to organise the order. A police protection notice was put in place.
Sen Const Kent said by then, Hannah had told her that Baxter had controlled what she wore and who she was allowed to talk to.
She said she’d asked Hannah to write things down about her relationship as she thought of them.
“I’d said think about what he’s done, start making notes, write it down,” she said.
Hannah painted a picture of someone who called constantly, left abusive messages on social media, coerced her into having sex every night or he’d take his anger out on the children, harassed and badgered her for hours, used the children as pawns and threatened to not bring them back when they visited with him.
Sen Const Kent said Hannah was constantly terrified Baxter would hurt the children to get back at her.
Sen Const Kent said Hannah also revealed Baxter had told her about a murder suicide plot relating to his first family.
“He had a rope and a plan and he told her about that early in their relationship and it had been playing on her mind,” Sen Const Kent said.
The officer said Hannah’s fear level was “very high” and she assessed her risk level as high.
After the kidnapping of Laianah, police tried to serve him with a protection notice on December 28 but he could not be found.
Officers managed to locate him the next day and serve it and when Hannah came to the station to thank Sen Const Kent, she warned her the fight was not over.
“I told her that this is just the first step in one of many and that it’s far from over,” she said.
“I knew, I just knew he’d fight it.
“I started to build up a sort of picture of what type of man he was and I knew he would not accept that Police Protection Notice (PPN), which he didn’t.”
Sen Const Kent said she wanted Hannah to continue to be alert to her safety and that a piece of paper would not stop Baxter.
“I didn’t want her to relax and think I’m protected, because it’s still an uphill battle,” she said.
“I remember I said that to Hannah: ‘it’s just a piece of paper’.”
On January 8, 2020, a Temporary Protection Order (TPO) was made which included conditions that Baxter be of good behaviour, stay 100m away from Hannah and the children and that he not contact or attempt to contact the family.
She said on January 22, a court reinstated a condition that Baxter not come near Hannah.
But instead of granting a 100m exclusion, the court made it just 20m.
She said Hannah came into Carina police station after the hearing and was very distressed.
“I was a little confused at first,” she said.
“She was just so upset.”
Sen Const Kent said after speaking to Hannah further, she realised she was upset that the court had refused to grant her request to prevent Baxter from coming within 100m of her.
Then, on January 31, Hannah called her to say Baxter had twister her wrist and arriving to drop off Trey with photos of her covering the back seat of Hannah in her lingerie.
She said she told Hannah to come into the station after work and she and her sergeant took statements from Hannah and her mother Sue.
Asked what risk level she would have put Baxter at that point, Sen Const Kent said “it would have been … the top one”.
The court was played an audio recording from February 2, 2020 when Sen Const Kent and a male Sergeant go to Baxter’s house to question him about the incident with the intimate photos when he hurt Hannah’s wrist.
In it, Baxter begins by claiming he himself had already reported it and given a statement to Coorparoo police but he later begins to backtrack.
“I went straight away to Coorparoo Station,” Baxter says, describing it as a “minor incident” where he “snatched” the images back from Hannah because they belonged to him.
Sen Const Kent agreed it was very common for coercive control offenders to portray themselves as victims and report incidents first as Baxter had done.
“I told them what happened. Just told them my events of what happened,” Baxter says in the recording.
Baxter says he had warned his solicitor of the incident and agreed he was told police might come to talk to him about it.
“He said that’s just part of what you guys have to do but I’ve done nothing wrong so …,” Baxter says.
The Sergeant is heard telling Baxter that he is welcome to contact his lawyer and that police will be taking action later that day.
“We would have taken him to the watch house and charged him,” Sen Const Kent said.
Police are then heard reminding Baxter not to breach the order in place.
“Don’t go contacting her, don’t go breaching that, for your own sake,” the Sergeant said.
Baxter responds: “I haven’t”.
Sen Const Kent said Baxter was trying to use the intimate photos of Hannah to fight her claim that he forced her to have sex.
“So he was trying to use those photos to say look my wife is sending me these photos so she obviously wants to have sex with me,” she said.
Sen Const Kent said by February 12, she had information from Hannah that Baxter was stalking her.
She said she didn’t refer the stalking behaviour to the CIB because she didn’t believe they had enough evidence and because she was focusing on getting a domestic violence order put in place.
At the time, there was a temporary protection order in place.
She said Hannah did not tell her Baxter had attempted to strangle her and had she known, she would have used it as evidence to obtain the domestic violence order.
Sen Const Kent said on one occasion, Hannah had believed Baxter was following her through Carindale.
But when she accessed the CCTV from the centre, it looked as though Baxter was doing some shopping.
The officer said on February 13, she took a statement from Hannah’s best friend, Nicole Brooks, in support of a domestic violence order.
She acknowledged there was nothing in Ms Brooks statement that said she thought Hannah and the children were at great risk.
She said she believed Ms Brooks told her after.
“You do still need something to back it up with,” she said.
Sen Const Brooks said despite that, she thought Ms Brooks fears were legitimate.
“She says she relayed at the police station, he’s going to take them out,” counsel assisting the coroner, Dr Jacoba Brasch said.
“I can’t recall if those were the exact words that she used,” Sen Const Kent said.
“I know she expressed deep concern for them all, which I shared.”
She said police did not have a “just in case prison”.
“We don’t put people in jail because their best friend comes to the station and says (she’s worried),” Sen Const Kent said.
The officer said Baxter hired various lawyers to fight the domestic violence order application.
On the night of February 2, Hannah sent text messages to Sen Const Kent, telling her the wrist incident with Baxter “frightened me more than I let on”.
Hannah said she could tell from the look in Baxter’s eyes that “he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me”.
She went on to reveal she thought Baxter was “so not right in the head” and that he would put her in a choker hold showing his Jiu-Jitsu moves which frightened her because while she was strong, she was not strong enough to escape him.
Hannah also disclosed to the police officer that was planning to update her will so that when Baxter killed her, the children would go to her parents or brother.
Sen Const Kent comforted Hannah by telling her she should not think like that and she should be “aware but not terrified”.
Sen Const Kent said she never specifically asked Hannah whether she had been strangled or suffocated by Baxter.
The inquest heard Hannah had disclosed a choking incident to a domestic violence service, but not to police.
“I can’t understand why Hannah didn’t tell me about that,” she said.
The inquest heard Hannah, in an affidavit, described Baxter holding her down as he tried to have sex with her.
“It was getting quite physical,” Hannah said, describing how she kept telling Baxter to stop.
Hannah relayed how Baxter held her down and kept trying to break the watch she was wearing.
Sen Const Kent said she and Hannah had agreed to use the stalking behaviour to put the domestic violence order in place, rather than look at charging Baxter with stalking.
The officer agreed that stalking can be an act of domestic violence as well as a criminal charge.
“We were both in agreement that we just use it to get the order in place for now,” she said.
The inquest heard Hannah said in her affidavit: “I am now constantly feeling anxious and scared while I’m at work. Rowan will come into my place at work (and) I strongly believe it’s not a coincidence.”
She agreed Hannah was texting her throughout January about “a number of stalking incidents”.
The inquest heard Hannah told police that while they were still married, Rowan had climbed a tree to watch her from the tree.
Sen Const Kent said the first couple of times she spoke to Hannah after she left her husband, Hannah had not wanted a domestic violence order.
“She just wanted some advice and to know where she stood,” she said.
She said it was not until Baxter abducted one of the children that they both agreed they should apply for an order.
The officer said it was also the first time an independent witness had seen the incident and Baxter’s actions.
The inquest previously heard from Dr Julie Ann Humphries, a cardiologist, that she had been riding her bike past a park in Bulimba when she saw Baxter take one of the children.
She said Dr Humphries provided an affidavit in support of the domestic violence order but was terrified of Baxter finding out and tracking her down.
“She was so scared of Baxter that she did not want to come to court,” Sen Const Kent said.
The officer said Dr Humphries had agreed to give evidence via telephone and arrangements were made that Baxter would not learn her name.
Vulnerable persons unit officer tells staff unable to track specific offenders or victims
Police officer Angela Trigg from the vulnerable persons unit said officers had tried to engage with Baxter, repeatedly going to his home and leaving cards.
In January, he called Acting Sergeant Trigg and asked why the contact card was left at his house.
She said the conversation was “fairly short”.
“I tried to encourage him to let us meet with him, because the role we play at the vulnerable persons unit is we aim to engage with people face-to-face because we feel we get a better outcome face-to-face..” she said.
“He had no interest in that. He said he was too busy.”
The court heard evidence that Hannah had disclosed instances of Baxter choking her to domestic violence support workers, but not to police.
Sgt Trigg agreed that while it is not done now, it would be helpful if such services could disclose that information to police.
Sgt Trigg told the court individual officers were unable to track specific offenders or victims at the Vulnerable Persons Unit because they had so many cases cross their desks.
“I am but one officer,” she told the court.
Sgt Trigg said many of the staff within the VPU were rotated in and out on a temporary basis.
“The biggest problem with that is that our unit is not permanently staffed with permanent officers,” she said.
“So the rotation of officers from one roster to the next changes so much. So there’s no consistency.
“So it’s difficult to be able to personally track an offender or an aggrieved and provide continuous support to that aggrieved because unfortunately you wouldn’t just have one aggrieved that you’d be managing.
“You’d be managing a whole caseload of them and I am but one officer trying to do that.”
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