Speaking with Nine’s A Current Affair on Friday night, Ms Clarke’s parents, Lloyd and Suzanne Clarke, and her brother Nathaniel, gave a glimpse into her tragic life and the lengths she went to to protect her children.
Ms Clarke’s mother revealed that her daughter feared her estranged husband Rowan Baxter would kill her and asked her family only last week: “What happens to my babies if he kills me?”
She described Baxter as “evil” and recounted how he “manipulated” her daughter and tried to control her life.
“Not all domestic abuse is physical,” Ms Clarke’s brother said. “Mental is probably one of the hardest things to pick up on.
“Even Hannah, for a few years there she said to me ‘I was thinking it wasn’t abuse because he never hit me’.”
The heart-wrenching interview comes as family violence experts say police around Australia are failing domestic violence victims in what they are calling the biggest national security problem facing Australia.