"Why would you hurt us, Daddy?" is what murdered mother Hannah Clarke's children would be asking if they had a voice, their distraught grandfather has told an inquest examining their deaths.
WARNING: This story contains content that readers may find distressing.
Addressing the inquest for a victim's impact statement, Lloyd Clarke said his three grandchildren Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey would say: "Why would you take away our futures, with all the promise and possibility that we had?"
"Why would you take away our laughter, our games, our reading and dancing and singing and play?
"Why didn't you love us like a father is supposed to?"
It was the first time the inquest had heard from Mr Clarke as it examined how Hannah's estranged husband Rowan Baxter had been able to murder her and their three children, aged 4, 5 and 6, by pouring petrol in their car and setting it on fire in a Brisbane street in February 2020.
"Hannah would say, 'Why couldn't you be a better man? A better father, a better husband?'" he told the Brisbane coroner's court on the final day of hearings into the case.
"'Why did you have to be such a coward and bully to us for so many years? And why couldn't you leave us alone to just live our lives in peace?
"'Why did you always have to have the last, manipulative, vindictive word?
"We have spent two years asking why," he continued.
"'Why would a parent do that to his children? Why would a husband do that to his wife? And why didn't we see it coming?'"
'All-consuming' grief
Sue Clarke, Hannah's mother, also made a highly emotional statement to the court explaining how not one part of the family's lives had not been affected by the murders.
"What we have suffered has cost us so much in every sense of the word – emotionally, physically, financially, our grief is all-consuming,'' she said.
"Not one day has passed without tears. There is no rest, no escape."
Ms Clarke said she hadn't been able to touch the girls' room since they left it two years ago.
"I can't bring myself to pack up their toys,'' she said, her voice breaking with emotion.
"We will never get to see them graduate or marry or have children of their own. Our hearts break that they were never given the chance to grow and excel and be happy."
Ms Clarke revealed that Hannah had been in the process of becoming a police officer when she was murdered, and was regaining her sense of self and growing stronger.
She said she and her husband wanted everyone to be able to spot the danger signs in their relationships, their friends and in themselves.
"A better understanding of coercive control won't change what we have suffered. It won't bring back the love that has disappeared from our lives,'' she said.
"But we do hope that a community that stands up against coercive control will stop other others suffering the same fate.
"And we hope it will prevent other parents and families suffering as we have suffered and spending their lives pondering that bewildering, unanswerable question: why?"
In closing submissions to the inquest, Jacoba Brasch QC, counsel assisting the coroner, summarised the evidence and speculated that Baxter was evil and bent on murdering Hannah Clarke.
She pondered whether Baxter had another plan that would leave him in charge of the children.
She suggested his actions in the days before the murders suggested he may have been seeking to restrain Hannah with zip ties, burn her and then give their three children chocolates, leaving him "playing happy families" as their principal carer.
"We all know now that they [the murders] were a matter of time,'' she said.
She said that Baxter was so determined to exact his revenge on Hannah he would have killed her in any event
Ms Brasch referenced the fact Baxter had filled up his car with fuel and had purchased the zip ties and the fuel and three Kinder Surprise chocolates, probably for his children.
Series of recommendations to conclude inquest
Ms Brasch presented a series of recommendations to coroner Jane Bentley that included better training for responders to domestic violence, improved information sharing and streamlining of domestic violence orders.
Her first recommendation was for there to be a five-day specialist training course for police "to bring everyone up to the baseline" on responding to domestic violence by the end of 2022, and then mandatory refresher training annually.
Ms Brasch also called for a trial of a multi-disciplinary specialist stand-alone police station.
She said this was because in many cases of domestic violence there is a wider family dynamic which includes children who are largely invisible in the binary nature of how domestic violence is perceived.
The station should be staffed by police domestic violence specialists and a detective to specifically investigate incidents such as strangulation and sexual assault, as well as specialist domestic violence support workers and child safety officers to assess the risk of the child and housing and health specialists, she said.
Ms Brasch called for better resourcing for men's behaviour-change programs to ensure perpetrators were kept accountable and rehabilitated.
The Clarkes' lawyer, Kylie Hillard, called for better training for officers, funding for housing for domestic violence victims, and changes to the domestic violence act.
She said police officers should always give strangulation victims the option of pressing charges.
Ms Hillard said the Clarkes wanted officers to be equipped, trained and given powers to protect women like Hannah.
"They only add this,'' she said.
"That people are equipped with the powers to keep Hannah and other women safe, to charge a perpetrator like Baxter, to object to bail, to share information, to identify the risks.
"To tell Hannah all of the information of her risk as it progresses and act on that risk. More importantly, that they be trained, that they be properly resourced, that they properly understand information is to be shared."
Coroner Jane Bentley thanked the Clarkes and the legal teams and acknowledged the importance of the case to her, not just as a coroner, but as a woman and a mother.
