‘She didn’t want to go’: Crystal Ratcliffe’s sister Melissa Ratcliffe speaks in hope new laws will save lives

The grieving sister of a woman brutally killed by her ex-partner hopes new coercive control laws will give more women the strength to escape manipulative relationships.

The grieving sister of a woman brutally killed by her ex-partner hopes new coercive control laws to be introduced to parliament this year will give more women the strength to escape emotionally and psychologically manipulative relationships.

Melissa Ratcliffe, the sister of slain mother-of-two Crystal Ratcliffe, murdered at the hands of her de facto of 18 years Ricky James Cowan, hoped the laws announced this week would provide women with the tools to leave their abusive partners.

Crystal’s murder tore her family apart and rendered her two children effectively orphans.

Cowan’s conduct was a textbook example of coercive control behaviours.

In the months prior to her murder, Cowan began to call Crystal incessantly, he would arrive at her home unannounced, and would repeatedly threaten to kill himself.

That behaviour only escalated after she told him on October 7, 2016 that she was permanently ending their relationship.

There was a barrage of phone calls from Cowan, and over the next few days, increasingly passive-aggressive, jealousy-laced, and at times suicidal communications and interactions.

Crystal tried everything to placate him.

Two nights before her death, Ms Ratcliffe said Crystal told her eldest brother Robert “that she had a funny feeling that he was going to kill her, because he threatened her”.

“And Robert just told her to pack all her bags and everything, he’d come and get her,” Ms Ratcliffe recalled.

“And then she didn’t want to go. He couldn’t force her.”

Within a week of telling Cowan the relationship was over, Crystal was murdered in what Justice Jim Henry described as a “rage-filled” knife attack.

Cowan received 20 years imprisonment in the Cairns Supreme Court in March this year in exchange for his guilty plea.

Now, in what is Domestic and Family Violence Prevention month and off the back of the State Government announcing it will criminalise by the year’s end coercive control behaviours of the type Cowan ruthlessly subjected Crystal to, Ms Ratcliffe is speaking out in the hope that it will help others.

The crime scene at Woomala St in Woree where Crystal Ratcliffe, 38, was fatally stabbed and her partner Ricky Cowan was injured after turning the knife on himself. PICTURE: ANNA ROGERS

She understands how hard it can be to leave an abusive partner.

She understands that some people have nowhere else to go.

But she said it was important for women to take note of the first instance of manipulation, and leave the relationship immediately if they could.

“Don’t leave it for weeks and weeks, months and months, years and years,” she said.

“You’ve got to straight away be on to it, I think. Reach out to family and friends.”

She recalled how her and Crystal and Cowan used to go nightclubbing when they were younger.

“It’s just funny because I didn’t see anything whatsoever, any violence from him or any bad words you know, towards her in front of me and that,” she said.

“And I think she just, you know, kept it to herself and didn’t want to tell anybody about it.

“But I think it had been going on for years.”

Crystal’s murder was especially cruel for Melissa, who had a falling out with her sister the year prior to her death.

Their fractured relationship meant Ms Ratcliffe had to have extensive counselling.

“All I wanted to do is say sorry to her, and I can’t now,” she said.

Despite pleading guilty to Crystal’s murder, Cowan never answered the question that was on everybody’s lips.

Ricky Cowan, 48, being taken to an ambulance on the day he murdered his de facto of 18 years Crystal Ratcliffe. After killing her, Cowan turned the knife on himself. Picture: Marc McCormack

Why?

Ms Ratcliffe said that now, she doesn’t want to know.

She said other victims of murder and trauma want to know why.

“They want to go and see that person to ask them. I don’t think I’d want to do that. In the end, we’ll never know why,” she mused.

It took more than five years to get justice for Crystal.

Despite that passage of time, Cowan didn’t have the guts to get up and explain himself in court, leaving it all up to his barrister.

“He couldn’t even turn around (in the dock) and say sorry to the children,” she said.

She wasn’t sure she would get up and read her victim impact statement at his sentencing but when she saw his cowardice, that made her want to do it even more.

“After my victim impact statement and I looked him in the eye and called him a piece of s***, I just felt 80 per cent better,” she said.

“I don’t know – it doesn’t bring Crystal back or anything but I just felt I needed to face him and say something to him.”

Crystal is now buried in the Mount Sheridan Cemetery, next to her mum and dad.

Ms Ratcliffe is grateful they weren’t alive to see what happened to their daughter.

“So they’re all together there. That gives me hope you know that they’re together and they’re looking after each other,” she said.

Originally published as ‘She didn’t want to go’: Crystal Ratcliffe’s sister Melissa Ratcliffe speaks in hope new laws will save lives