MOTHER LOVE
After having her first child at 17, then finding the strength to escape an abusive relationship, TikTok sensation Kat Clark is now thriving and sharing her life with 4.3 million loyal followers
Kat Clark was in her teens when she made a promise to herself. She was 17 years old with a newborn, had fled her Brisbane home to escape her “religious” family and lived in fear of her abusive partner. Her childhood innocence had vanished long ago, along with her independent, confident, carefree teen spirit.
Clark should have been in class with her friends finishing her final year of school, instead she was under the control of a monster, caring for her newborn, frightened and desperate.
So, each night as she held her daughter in her arms, she looked deep into her wide brown eyes so full of hope, wonder, vulnerability, and unconditional love, and laid out her terms. She would do everything she could to break free to give her daughter, and herself, a better life.
At 36, the Gold Coast mother has the world watching as she rewrites her story.
Clark sits at the kitchen table of the home she shares with husband Jonathan, 40, a mortage broker, and daughters, Latisha, 19, an influencer with 1.5 million followers, and Deja, 12, and recounts a heartbreaking journey of abuse and pain that belies the warmth and joy she radiates. But the overwhelming theme to her story is one of a fiercely loving mother determined to love, provide and protect. That resolve, she says, has led her to this moment.
Clark has become one of Australia’s most influential and successful online creators since launching her TikTok profile in 2016, but only taking it seriously three years ago.
Impressively, she has amassed 4.3 million followers, which roughly equates to a sixth of Australia’s population.
Her interest piqued as she watched her daughters making fun dance videos and it soon moved to her own account where she posted healthy recipes online.
But as soon as she started to share her life behind the screen – the one of a teen mum who escaped an abusive relationship – she caught the world’s attention.
Her success has been on an incredible trajectory with Clark named Creator of the Year at last year’s TikTok second annual For You Fest in Sydney in December, an event celebrating the top content makers in the industry.
She also won the 2022 AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Audience Choice Award for Best Digital Creator at the event also held in Sydney in December.
In a competitive industry, the accolades have surely had a hand in her skyrocketing popularity – Clark has gained three million followers since February last year.
Millions watch her daily, minute-long videos as she offers snippets into a life layered from light to dark. There’s everything from “get ready with me” and family banter to travel and the earnest (and often sassy) interactions between mother and daughters. She candidly chats with Deja as she styles her hair and often discusses her unique relationship with Latisha, with the 17-year age gap leading many to mistake the pair for siblings.
But it became far more than light entertainment for Clark after she opened up about her harrowing experience with domestic violence in her teens and her brave escape from the abuse.
She now uses the platform to raise
awareness of coercive control and as a voice for vulnerable women.
The world has embraced Clark for all she is – a mother and a woman who defies conventions and is unapologetically herself. And her fans can’t get enough.
Since Clark and Latisha launched their podcast, called Basically Besties, in October last year, it has seen huge success, with 3.4 million downloads and 126,000 streams on average a week (and rapidly increasing).
The duo, alongside Deja and Jonathan, who are equally as loved by followers, recently took the podcast on tour with thousands of adoring fans packing out theatres across the country for a series of live shows. Clark is becoming a household name among a generation and is, as they say, enjoying “a moment”.
“Being able to share my journey online is a result of everything that’s happened to me, it feels I’ve been working towards this moment for a really long time,” says Clark from the kitchen table of her Gold Coast home. “I learned so much from having a daughter at 17, from being in the toxic relationship, all of that … all the years have really created this moment for me.”
A young Clark could never have envisioned this “moment” for herself as a girl who fell pregnant at 16 and lost sight of her dreams. A girl who endured an abusive relationship for just over two years and spent weekends at women’s shelters with her newborn to escape the drunken rage of her partner at home. A girl whose hope for a happy future was fading, overshadowed by a desperation to survive.
The strong, ambitious, successful, powerful, devoted mother and woman adored by many around the world can hardly believe the odds she’s overcome.
Clark grew up in Holland Park inBrisbane’s
southern suburbs with a Filipino mother, Australian father and younger brother.
She describes it as a “strict upbringing” because of her devout Pentecostal Christian mother, who ensured she went to Bible studies on weekends. The more Clark was pushed into a certain lifestyle, the more she rebelled and at 14, things started to turn.
“I was a horrible teen. My mum had one path she wanted me to go down and I was dead against it,” she says.
She stole bottles of wine from her dad’s cellar, headed to the park and got drunk with her older neighbours. School was certainly not a priority so her parents pulled her out of Catholic all-girls school Loreto College in Coorparoo and enrolled her in what is now known as Whites Hill State College in Camp Hill, also in Brisbane’s south. “I was a really bad student, I’m not even going to sugarcoat it, I was just focused on having fun with my friends, I didn’t care about my grades, I didn’t care about anything, I just wanted to have fun,” she says.
Her mother, she admits, had lost all control of her. Clark was sent by her family more than 2000km away for the school
holidays to stay with a friend who lived on Thursday Island, off Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland.
“She thought it would be good for me to go there because it’s isolated and I couldn’t get into trouble so I went there for six weeks,” Clark says. She pauses and adds, “and that’s where I met him.”
At the beginning, everything was fun, they were fearless teens in an exciting new relationship. Six months in, when she was 16, Clark fell pregnant.
“I went to Garden City (shopping centre, in Brisbane) after school and messaged my cousin to meet me there because I needed to buy a pregnancy test,” Clark begins.
“She had money, I didn’t, so she gave me $10 and I bought myself a test. I did the test in the public toilets and looked down and within 30 seconds it was positive.
“I was really scared and obviously worried about what my parents would say and worried about what people would think of me. There was also a part of me that was excited to have a baby.”
Clark continued with school, saying that from the moment she found out she was pregnant she wanted to give her child the best life possible so tried harder with her studies, going from a D-grade student to straight As and was focused and dedicated.
During grade 12, her growing pregnant belly obvious in her school uniform, bullying deeply impacted Clark, who stayed in school until two weeks before she gave birth. “It was hard,” she says. “Can you imagine being in grade 12 and there is a pregnant chick there?
“I went from being this popular, cool chick to being someone that everyone thought had completely ruined their life and was a loser.”
But there are fond memories she keeps, such as one of her teachers who she calls Mr Edwards, who threw her a baby shower in his drama room. If only Clark knew back then of her true superpower which she already had in spades – love.
On May 27, 2003, on Clark’s 17th birthday,
Latisha was born, overwhelming Clark with emotion – like she’d just been handed the greatest gift of all. But dreams of living happily in the new baby bubble quickly vanished. Her home life with her parents, she says, was toxic so she fled to be with her boyfriend, Latisha’s father, who still lived on Thursday Island. She didn’t speak to her parents for six months and after living on Thursday Island for about a year, moved to Cairns with her boyfriend and gradually disconnected from friends and family.
Clark says her boyfriend was a heavy partier and drinker, out most weekends leaving her behind with Latisha.
Clark’s bright smile fades as she revisits the horror. “He would get really abusive … punching, throwing, dragging, choking, the works,” she says. “The next day he would pretend like he didn’t know what had happened.”
One day, the viciousness hit a crescendo and the moment still brings Clark to tears.
“He grabbed me by the throat and pulled me up against the wall, he had me there for a while,” she says through tears, the memory still haunting her. He controlled access to their shared phone, monitored texts and calls and cut up her lingerie.
“I lost so much of myself, I became a completely different person. I had no selfconfidence, my anxiety was through the roof and I went from being this naughty little teen who would push the boundaries to someone who was just completely shattered,” she says. During Clark’s visit to the women’s shelter she listened to stories of women who endured similar scenarios for years. It was then she realised she needed to find the courage to leave her relationship.
“After the incidents of being beaten up I would go and feed Tisha and so many nights I would be bawling my eyes out,” she says.
“I would constantly promise her that things were going to get better, it was something I was really focused on, she gave me a lot of strength.”
For three weeks, Clark saved a dollar a day in secret to pay for a prepaid burner phone to reconnect with old friends. And so began her escape route. “That was really scary, I was afraid the phone was going to go off or I didn’t put it on silent properly, I was so scared he was going to find it,” she says.
“That’s when I started contacting my own friends and being open and honest about what was happening, so many of them were saying, ‘You need to leave right now’.” After about three months, she put her plan into action. Clark convinced her partner that her parents wanted to meet Latisha and then booked a train to Brisbane. He’d hidden her ID and photo albums in the house and stashed Latisha’s birth certificate under his pillow, ensuring Clark would have to return to him.
But while he was sleeping, Clark searched for the albums and ID and turned off his alarm to make sure he would be rushed the next morning, allowing her time to grab the birth certificate and run out the door to catch her train. “I am just amazed, I don’t understand how I did it but I’m proud of myself for doing it,” she says.
Four hours into her journey she sent a text to him, “I’m never coming back,” and threw the phone in the bin.
“It was the best feeling in the world.” It took time to find herself again – and also re-establish a relationship with her parents – and build enough confidence so she could finally carve out the life she had always wanted.
When Latisha was three, Clark met
Jonathan, her now husband and the man Latisha also calls dad, at a pub in Carindale, on Brisbane’s southside.
She secured her first full-time job as a telemarketer and rose to become an account executive. She eventually left to start an electrical contracting business with Jonathan, an electrician, in 2009.
A year later, they welcomed their daughter Deja to the family, which Clark says “was a completely different experience”.
Life came to an abrupt halt, however, after Jonathan had a car accident and fractured his spine, taking him off the tools and forcing the pair to close the business in 2014. Clark worked three jobs including doing eyelash extensions and promo work on weekends as well as her old telemarketing job to make ends meet.
But an unexpected opportunity landed in her lap when the cafe in her gym was looking for a new owner. Clark was excited for a new challenge, took it on and turned it into a clean-eating cafe. To broaden her clientele, she posted her recipes online. They became so popular she created a subscription-based Facebook group and soon she was making enough income from social media to quit the cafe in 2016.
Everything I do is because of my kids. I just want to be a better mum and give them a better life
Clark started on TikTok in 2016 and would
do the odd dance video with her daughters then post healthy snack ideas and simple exercise challenges until Latisha suggested her mum open up about her life.
“One day I did,” smiles Kat, “and it just went off. I didn’t think that many people would be invested in a day of my life like that.” Her content back then racked up about 50,000 views. She jokes that the sheer volume registered at a State of Origin game. “They show you the attendance on the screen and how many people are in the stadium and it had 49,000 and something and I was like, ‘So this many people are watching my videos?’ It was a ‘holy crap’ moment. I didn’t even think of that as a big number but when you’re sitting in a stadium full of people, it’s a lot.”
Her content varies from stories of her toxic relationship to life as a young mum with teenage daughters, funny taste tests of new foods, daily observations, musings and everything in between. Her videos attract millions of views, with one – where she’s doing Deja’s hair and the pair are chatting (which has become a signature series) – racking up almost 11 million views.
With more than four million followers, Clark works full-time as an influencer and has a lifestyle of travel and opportunity.
She’s grateful to have a healthy income which largely comes from brand endorsements (“everything from vacuums to GHD products and vitamins”).
But a public persona comes with an ugly side, she says, and it can be nasty with online trolls targeting her body, choices and children but, frighteningly, they’ve also breached her privacy. “My husband and I were heading out and there was a group of teenagers at our letterbox just hanging out,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wow, people know our address, and how did they find out?’ We got in the car and I was on the verge of tears, ‘Did that just happen?’”
Fame was the part she was least prepared for as well as the responsibility she now holds with her influential status. Of all her successes, raising two girls in a loving and safe household alongside her husband, is the greatest one.
“Everything I do is because of my kids. I just want to be a better mum and give them a better life.”
The 17-year-old Kat who desperately dreamt of more has fulfilled her promise.
I learned so much from having a daughter at 17, from being in the toxic relationship, all of that