Hannah Clarke was the loving mother of three beautiful children. Their names were Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey. They were 6, 4 and 3. A photograph made public this week shows the four of them smiling while splashing in the shallows at the beach.

I don’t know much else about Hannah Clarke and her children. However, thanks to the atrocious state of the media and domestic violence reporting in this country, I have been told a fair bit about the man who murdered them.

View photos Hannah Clarke was the loving mother of Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey. They were 6, 4 and 3. Photo: Facebook More

I’ve heard he was a ‘footy star’ and ‘ex-NRL player’ who friends believed was a ‘loving and dedicated father’. I have been told he was born in Tauranga NZ and that he was a member of the President’s Selection 2005 team. For fu*ks sake, I even know that two former Brisbane Broncos players used to train at his gym.

I was told all of this entirely irrelevant nonsense alongside the only story we need to know about the man Hannah Clarke had been trying to escape; the man whose violence police were aware of, and who they had visited in regards to a family violence matter as recently as January.

On Wednesday morning, the man Hannah Clarke had been trying to escape came to the street where her parents lived, where she had brought her children to find safety from the man they were trying to escape.

Hannah Clarke was preparing to take her children to school when the man she had been trying to escape jumped into the car beside them, brandishing a jerry can of petrol he had been seen filling at a station earlier that morning.

The man Hannah Clarke had been trying to escape with the children she was trying to protect then doused the four of them with petrol before setting the car alight.

Hannah Clarke managed to escape the car that held the man she had also been trying to escape for months, the man whose violence police had known about in January but who was still free to terrorise the woman who had dared to leave him. (Bizarrely, one of the few things I know about Hannah Clarke was that she was wearing athleisure at the time of the attack, because of course the Australian media considers that detail more important than the fact she was a brave and fierce mother who was doing everything in her power to protect her children from the man she knew was a threat to them.)

Hannah Clarke died later in hospital of extensive injuries.

View photos Hannah Clarke was murdered, alongside her three children, after the man she was trying to escape jumped into her car in Brisbane. Photo: Facebook More

According to reports, the man emerged from the vehicle and tried to prevent neighbours from helping to free Hannah Clarke’s three children, the three children the man has subsequently been described as having been the ‘loving and supportive father’ to. The man then stabbed himself until he died.

Good riddance.

But it’s not good enough. I wish he had burned alongside them and survived his injuries. I wish he could be made accountable for what he’s done. I wish he would have to spend every day for the rest of a long, long life in pain and agony, despised and vilified and locked in a cell surrounded by mirrors so he could never escape staring into the eyes of the mongrel bastard he is. I wish he could be a living reminder to us all of the pain and destruction wrought by men against women and their children, fostered and inculcated by a society that refuses to properly address sexism, misogyny and entitlement.