When Erin Regan heard reports a 29-year-old woman had gone up in flames inside her Queanbeyan home she instinctively knew it was her sister.
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"That's Leanne," she said to her father. "You've got to phone Leanne."
Leanne Regan's husband doused her in petrol as she watched television and set her alight in their lounge room on October 1, 1992.
Her screams could be heard in the background of his call to triple zero.
She suffered horrific burns to 90 per cent of her body and died in hospital nine days later.
Ms Regan was 11 when the actions of one man took her big sister away, but she has carried the shock, pain and trauma of that loss ever since.
Her parents and brother were also propelled into survival mode as they navigated the fog of grief and months of difficult court proceedings.
A jury found her sister's husband guilty of murder and he was jailed for 18 years in 1995.
More than 20 years after the killing, Ms Regan's done with hiding her family's past and has chosen to speak publicly for the first time.
She wants Canberrans to know domestic violence is real, it happens to all kinds of families, and meaningful action is needed to halt it now.
"The more that we're aware of what's going on behind closed doors, it might help one person," she said.
"You see numbers and it doesn't really drive in.
"You see people and you see names and you see families, and that's where the impact is. We're real.
Her sister's murder caused Ms Regan to shut down and she admits she "went off the rails".
As a teenager she dabbled in drugs to dull the pain, ran away from home and was herself in a violent relationship for a few years.
Thoughts of the gruesome way her sister died haunted her. Her family's reality, she said, was most people's worst nightmare.
She experienced bouts of depression and still suffers post-traumatic stress disorder.
Now 33, Ms Regan, who has three sons, is studying social work and wants to help people who battle mental illness and domestic abuse.
She has called on the ACT government to bolster funds to frontline support services, particularly specialised programs for children and families shattered by domestic homicide.
"At the end of the day we just want to be treated normally. Our reality is that something horrible has happened to us. But that doesn't change who we are in many ways. The stigma is really, really horrible.
"We need to start telling people our stories. We're not statistics. That was my sister, just like Tara Costigan was someone's mother, someone's daughter.
"These people had a life, they had friends, they had family. By brushing it under the carpet and not talking about it, they are forgotten."
