Allison Baden-Clay's Of Legacy Hope

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The last thing on earth Vanessa Fowler wants to do is recount the awful domestic abuse that her sister, Allison Baden-Clay, suffered in the final years of her marriage – the final years of her life. But if it will save other families from the grief that hers has suffered, Vanessa is prepared to go there.

Seven years since her sister was murdered, Vanessa says, in a powerful, exclusive interview with The Weekly, “we still grieve every day, but we understand what Allison was going through. We want to make sure other families get to see the signs and get to intervene.”

Vanessa has been working with Griffith University on a new program to educate Australians about the signs that might indicate a friend or loved one is in an abusive relationship. The program references Allison’s experience and it has helped Vanessa, in retrospect, to see how the abuse in her sister’s marriage evolved.

In her last days, Allison knew her husband was having an affair and it was agony. It made her feel sick. She’d have given anything for him to love her again, and make love to her. For a “proper” hug. She was lonely and cried when he wouldn’t sleep in the same bed. When she’d tried to resume a sexual relationship, he laughed at her underwear and told her she smelled.

“Why so mean?” Allison asked in her journal. She felt as if she wasn’t good enough. She blamed herself for “just” being a mother and “forgetting” to be a wife. Two days before she died, she wrote: “really hurt, had so many opportunities to tell me – let me believe it was all my fault and therefore I was at your mercy.”