And then things really got scary.

Mrs Brose, her husband and three children were watching Australian Idol in bed one evening when there was a knock at the door.

It was an angry man demanding to speak to Mrs Brose.

Her visitor was an agitated Miguel Baluskas, clad in pyjamas and slippers and consumed by a deep rage.

It was about 9.30pm on May 20, 2018 – the day he had learned Mrs Brose had made moves to block the sale of his family home, which they had put on the market as the defamation case escalated.

“I’m one of the people you’re suing. I want to see your wife, go get her,’’ Mr Baluskas barked at Mrs Brose’s husband – then began to smash down the door.

Mrs Brose’s daughters were shrieking and hysterical as wood splintered and glass shattered.

“I heard a male voice say ‘I want to f-----g kill your wife. I’m going to f-----g expose your wife for everything she’s done for the last seven years’,’’ Mrs Brose testified.

“I was screaming at (her daughters) to get upstairs and hide. Peter then ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife and ran back to the front door to protect us.”

Mr Baluskas kicked through the door and made eye contact with the frightened principal.

Her husband was not mucking around.

“I have a knife mate,” he warned Mr Baluskas.

The agitated former soldier turned and ran, jumping into his car.

Without turning on the light, he reversed up the road backwards.

Mrs Brose said the incident made her family feel “violated and vulnerable” and her children “terrified”.

Mrs Brose said her disabled daughter wanted to know “when the mean man was coming back” and needed counselling.

Mr Baluskas, who had no history of violent criminal offending, was arrested the next day.

He told police he knew his conduct was wrong.

But he “had reached breaking point”.

The couple sold their Tamborine Mountain property for $575,000 – Mrs Brose tried to freeze the proceeds until they paid preliminary court costs owed to her.

The family bought a smaller property in Robina for $515,000.

Ultimately, as their legal bills mounted, that too was sold.

Mrs Brose, meanwhile, installed security cameras at the home and began to sleep with an axe beside her bed.

As the defamation trial grew closer, the Baluskas’ festering resentment for Mrs Brose only increased.

Another affidavit on the court includes a scathing letter sent by the couple to Mrs Brose’s lawyers in July 2019 responding to a settlement offer.

It was short on both legalese and niceties.

“ … We don’t need seven days to consider her insulting offer. She must be desperate. Your client has already financially ruined us, so we don’t need to think about it. Let her incur the costs of going to trial after all that’s what she has wanted all this time. It was your client’s choice to prosecute us. Your client set us up and we took the bait”, the letter read.

“ … Your client messed with the wrong group of people if she thinks she can continue to get away with what we have now discovered about her and her years of wrong doings. It’s not hard to dig into someone’s history these days, why don’t you ask her about it? … We did warn you if your client pursued us then we would air her dirty laundry out in public and we were not joking”.

“ … As we told you from the start, she won’t be getting a red cent from us you should have taken Miguel’s 70 cents when you had the chance, we would rather go bankrupt than to pay her anything. Hope she has paid your bills because if you’re relying on our house to pay them for her it’s all gone now … So you can tell your client to stick her offer up her arse we believe in karma”.

NEXT UP: TEMPERS FLARE, TEARS FLOW

OTHER CHAPTERS IN THE SERIES:

- CHAPTER ONE: LIVES DESTROYED BY JUST 43 WORDS

- CHAPTER TWO: PRINCIPAL FROM HELL, OR HELL OF A PRINCIPAL?

- CHAPTER THREE: THE FATEFUL EIGHT

- CHAPTER FOUR: MY ENTIRE FUTURE EXPLODED

- CHAPTER FIVE: TELL YOUR CLIENT TO SHOVE HER OFFER UP HER ARSE

- CHAPTER SIX: TEMPERS FLARE, TEARS FLOW

- CHAPTER SEVEN: THREE SECRET LETTERS

- CHAPTER EIGHT: CAN I BORROW $15, SON?