Lauren's Story

Producer: Hugh Nailon

She was a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her.

On a fine Spring day in 2005, Lauren Huxley was heading home from TAFE as usual.

Then, the unthinkable, she was attacked by a stranger - brutally bashed in her own home by a man she'd never met.

A carpenter named Robert Farmer who lived in the same suburb savagely beat her, doused her with petrol, set the house alight and left her to die.

Lauren's story of survival, remarkable recovery and extreme bravery has never fully been told.

Until now.

With Farmer convicted and behind bars, she tells her story, exclusively, to Ray Martin.

Special features

Blog: Ray Martin on meeting Lauren Huxley

Webchat: Read Sunday night's webchat with Lauren and Simone Huxley

Full transcript

INTRODUCTION RAY MARTIN: I've covered some terrible crimes over the years but nothing quite as evil as this one. Lauren Huxley was a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her. On a fine Spring day back in 2005, she was heading home from TAFE, as usual. Then, the unthinkable - attacked by a stranger. Brutally bashed in her own home by a man she'd never met. Robert Farmer, out on bail after a life time of crime, savagely beat her, he doused her with petrol, set the house alight and left her to die. Lauren's story of survival, remarkable recovery and extreme bravery has never fully been told. Until now. And let me tell you it's pretty special. With the incredible support of her family and with Farmer now convicted Lauren can truly start her life anew.

STORY RAY MARTIN: LAUREN HUXLEY: Ta-da!

SIMONE HUXLEY: Wow. You look amazing.

RAY MARTIN: How good is that?

SIMONE HUXLEY: Like a princess.

RAY MARTIN: Watch these two at play and you've gotta smile. Devoted sisters on a single-minded mission - shopping for frocks till they drop. SIMONE HUXLEY: Oh, sexy legs!

RAY MARTIN: You two hate this, don't you.

SIMONE HUXLEY: Absolutely.

RAY MARTIN: World champions?

SIMONE HUXLEY: Gold medallists.

RAY MARTIN: Lauren Huxley and her big sister Simone are catching up on life and laughs together. Happy times they almost lost forever. Can you look in the mirror now and like what you see?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Yeah, I love it.

RAY MARTIN: How do you feel today?

LAUREN HUXLEY: I feel great. I'm healthy, I'm happy, and everything I want to be.

RAY MARTIN: It is too hard to comprehend what happened to Lauren 2.5 years ago. The agony and the pain inflicted by this evil brute of a man. You seem so nice, you seem to be so relaxed, and you seem to be, thankfully, so positive. Do you understand that he did a terrible thing?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Yeah, I do. It was really horrible thing to do and yeah, I'm just... and I haven't done anything bad...

RAY MARTIN: To deserve it.

LAUREN HUXLEY: yeah, to deserve it, that's it.

RAY MARTIN: But when you look at her today it is an absolute triumph. Pat and Christine Huxley can smile once again because they've got their family back. Dad's a carpenter, Mum has worked in a bank for years. They have lived happily in this house since they got married. But the nightmare, the shock of what happened to their gorgeous girl, still haunts them. You said, Christine, you will always be in shock.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: I will. I will. It was unimaginable. How could anybody do this? Any one human being do this to anybody? I just think it's an evil act of cruelty, it's senseless.

PAT HUXLEY: It's your worst nightmare as a parent, truly.

RAY MARTIN: What did you think when you saw this photo of this man that everyone told you had done these terrible things to you?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Well I just...

RAY MARTIN: Could you understand it?

LAUREN HUXLEY: No, I couldn't, how could someone do that to a human being, to anyone.

RAY MARTIN: Lauren actually went to primary school right there - across the road from the family house. In fact, on that terrible day, back in November 2005, the kids had just got out of school. Lauren jumped off the bus up there, she had been to TAFE, and she walked down this sunny suburban street to the safety of the family home. She went inside, opened the back doors and said gidday to the little pups. What she didn't know was she was about to be bashed senseless. Bashed unconscious. As her dad said - bashed to a pulp. She was about to have petrol thrown over her, and left to burn to death out in the garage. Is there anything at all you remember from the day that terrible thing happened.

LAUREN HUXLEY: No there's not one thing that I can remember. But I do think I'm blessed not remembering it because it is something that I would not want to remember.

RAY MARTIN: But the rest of the Huxley family will never forget what this monster did to Lauren. Their baby girl. 39-year-old Robert Farmer lived just up the road but was he was totally unknown to the Huxleys. When you saw Robert Farmer in the newspapers did you recognise him?

LAUREN HUXLEY: No, not at all.

RAY MARTIN: Are you sure that you had never seen him before?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Yep. He was a complete stranger to me.

RAY MARTIN: This stranger, a menacing bloke more than twice Lauren's size, burst into their home and ripped their world apart.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: I ran up the street and I saw my neighbour and I said, "what has happened here?" She said, "There's a fire in your house." I said, "But where is my Lauren?" She said, "She's been assaulted."

PAT HUXLEY: I saw the police officer out front and she said, "Are you Mr Huxley?" I said, "I am."

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: She said, "She's going to be fine, she is going to be fine." I think she was trying to calm me down and, you know, make sure that I didn't freak out too much because it was... what we were to see... was absolutely terrible.

SIMONE HUXLEY: Her eyes were just black, absolute black and you could not even see her eyelashes. She had no nose. She didn't look like anybody or anything. It was just a body lying there, really.

PAT HUXLEY: He absolutely totalled her. Whoever this was. And I said, "All we can do is pray."

RAY MARTIN: Lauren was close to death when they rushed her here to Westmead Hospital. She was so bad the priest administered the last rites. She was in a coma for weeks. She had operation after operation including a 13-hour operation on her battered brain. Just to survive would take a medical miracle and lots of prayers. How close was it, how close to dying was she?

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: Very close.

PAT HUXLEY: Within an hour.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: Within an hour. I think that the doctors basically said, "Come and say your last goodbye."

PAT HUXLEY: That was it.

RAY MARTIN: You don't want to hear that.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: I didn't. I turned around and said, "Don't ever say that to a mother" because I felt so strongly Lauren was going to live. She was too young to die.

RAY MARTIN: And there was a moment, Pat, when you said, "Just make her survive. "It doesn't matter what shape she's in, "just keep her alive."

PAT HUXLEY: Oh, yeah, yeah. I said "I know what I've got here," I said, "I've got a baby in arms." And I said, "I'm going to nurse her to the end." And I said, "I don't care, all I want to hear from you is... "you make her live and we will do the rest."

RAY MARTIN: Lauren's face and skull had been slashed with heavy fibro cutters. Like being beaten with the sharp-end of an axe.

PAT HUXLEY: When I saw the x-rays it was unbelievable.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: I walked out...

PAT HUXLEY: The only thing holding her skull together was her skin.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: You know how you have a boiled egg and you crack that boiled egg and it shatters. That is what her skull looked like, it was just all in pieces.

RAY MARTIN: How many cuts were there?

DR RICHARD VICKERS: Approximately seven clear, distinct lacerations to her scalp and face.

RAY MARTIN: Leading facial surgeon Richard Vickers is often asked to beat the odds.

DR RICHARD VICKERS: Her facial bones are all in jagged pieces.

RAY MARTIN: This much damage usually means a high-speed car crash, with little chance of survival.

DR RICHARD VICKERS: I thought she only had a 5% chance of living and if she did survive she would have permanent brain damage.

RAY MARTIN: Richard, how did she survive?

DR RICHARD VICKERS: I don't know, Ray.

SIMONE HUXLEY: There is a scar down the middle of her forehead.

RAY MARTIN: He has rebuilt her face again. Her eyebrows, her eye, her cheeks, her nose, and her upper jaw. He's an absolute magician. Was there a time when you looked in the mirror, when you came home and thought "I look ugly" or "I look horrible"?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Yeah.

RAY MARTIN: Because you don't, you look fantastic.

LAUREN HUXLEY: Oh, thanks. I did... just seeing what I saw in the mirror... I was just... I was just devastated. I'm fortunate that I can cover a lot of my scars and my marks and everything and no-one would know.

RAY MARTIN: Simone is a professional beauty consultant. But you can't cover up all of the damage.

SIMONE HUXLEY: Every time I do her make up I look at her eye and I just think, "Oh, this is from this monster. "This is what this monster has done to you." And I just... I cant understand it.

RAY MARTIN: And while the physical scars are disappearing Lauren knows the injury to her brain will take much longer to heal.

RAY MARTIN: Have there been tough times for you?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Yeah. There were tough times but I guess everyone has good times and bad times, so, yeah.

RAY MARTIN: You didn't let them get to you.

LAUREN HUXLEY: No, I was just determined to beat them.

RAY MARTIN: And you have.

LAUREN HUXLEY: Yeah, I have.

RAY MARTIN: For 2.5 years they have all rebuilt Lauren's life. Mum, Dad and Simone have been a critical part of the Rehab Team. It's a tough repetitive slog, pumping and pushing the pain barrier. How do you feel? How's that, easy? You've just outrun your sister again.

LAUREN HUXLEY: I haven't run like that for ages.

RAY MARTIN: They have coaxed her every step of the way, like a baby. Every little stumble... every big mouthful.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: I remember the first meal she ate and I sat there for four hours with her while she ate that first meal. And it was so good really to see hat food going in her mouth.

LAUREN HUXLEY: I've always been a determined person...

RAY MARTIN: But what about when people said, "Look, sorry, but you might not get back to normal."

LAUREN HUXLEY: No, I don't like comments like that because its quite negative but I'm a really positive person and I like to keep positive and look on the bright side of things.

RAY MARTIN: Hanging over all the bright months of Lauren's rehab and recovery was a dark ugly cloud - the court case here against the accused man, Robert Farmer. Only now would the Huxleys learn of his dreadful criminal record, and get a chance to face him in person.

PAT HUXLEY: I couldn't believe it, he was a career criminal.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: 26 convictions before he turned 25.

RAY MARTIN: Did you want to see him in court did you want to confront him?

PAT HUXLEY: I wanted to be there. I wanted him to feel my presence there.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: It was quite confronting seeing this man who was only about 12 feet away from me, staring, staring at us. And I was staring at him.

RAY MARTIN: Despite overwhelming evidence, Farmer showed no remorse for his ghastly crime.

He refused to admit that he did it, and the family will never know why. They felt disgusted all over again.

SIMONE HUXLEY: Just to deny it, like he'd never seen her before. And deny... that he had no involvement in it... it just made me feel physically ill.

RAY MARTIN: What do you think of this bloke?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Ah, well, he's just a monster.

RAY MARTIN: The trial took 24 days, that's about as long as Lauren was in a coma. But the jury wasted no time in finding Farmer guilty. At last the Huxleys had a reason to celebrate. For this good family who have been to hell and back this is how justice feels, at last.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: I can't explain the feeling that you get inside of ... we need to get this man off the streets. PAT HUXLEY: "You can burn in hell with the petrol you low-life bastard." That's the least I could say.

ALL SING: # Happy birthday to you #

RAY MARTIN: Farmer's murderous attack stopped Lauren's life for a while but every girl needs to come of age. With milestones like a 21st birthday party with a stripper-gram - courtesy of a big sister. But were you shocked, Lauren?

LAUREN HUXLEY: I was... I was, oh gosh, with so many people around me I just um...

SIMONE HUXLEY: You loved it.

LAUREN HUXLEY: I didn't know what they would think of me, but I did love it.

RAY MARTIN: So this is it, eh?

SIMONE HUXLEY: So, Ray, this is the ultimate test.

RAY MARTIN: And the biggest milestone - her driving test which she nailed first go. So I'm the guinea pig, right?

SIMONE HUXLEY: Yes, you are the guinea pig. Do you dare go in the car with her now?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Mum and dad are still so worried about me getting on the road... but that's what every parent is worried of.

RAY MARTIN: But the first time you went behind the wheel of a car on your own did you think, "I'm free"?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Yes, I did.

RAY MARTIN: Now, it's not Lauren's fault but for 2.5 years the Huxley family has focused totally on her on just helping Lauren get better once again. They have put their own lives on hold but Pat, Christine and Simone wouldn't have it any other way.

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: She is very spoilt now.

PAT HUXLEY: She can do anything. Like before, if she left the towel on the floor I would call out "Oh Lauren, go and hang it out." I don't say nothing any more, I just pick it up and take it out.

RAY MARTIN: So she gets away with blue murder?

PAT HUXLEY: She gets away with a lot.

RAY MARTIN: What was the best moment in 2.5 years?

CHRISTINE HUXLEY: I remember she got the trachea out, and she was starting to breathe by herself, and that was a miracle. Then the next day she said, "I love you, mum." And we just... the tears just flowed... it was just a moment... that I thought I'd never ever hear my daughter say that to me again.

PAT HUXLEY: I just sit back some days and look at her and go, "I'm the luckiest bloke in the world."

RAY MARTIN: You've got it all in front of you, what now?

LAUREN HUXLEY: I want to get a full time job, and I want to travel...

RAY MARTIN: Boyfriend?

LAUREN HUXLEY: Ah, boyfriend... yeah, that would be good.

RAY MARTIN: You don't want people to fuss about you?

LAUREN HUXLEY: No. No. I just... I don't see anything special about me really.

RAY MARTIN: Lauren, you are special. Let me tell you, you are special.

LAUREN HUXLEY: Oh, thanks.