Twenty years ago Pat and Christine Huxley were told to kiss their daughter goodbye.

Savagely beaten and doused with petrol in her own home, 18-year-old Lauren Huxley was so horrendously injured that doctors gave her just a one in 20 chance of survival.

In the space of an instant this typical suburban family was thrust into a new dimension of agony and sorrow.

“It’s like a bad dream,” Pat says recalling that moment today.

“Like, is this, is this reality? It’s a nightmare. You know what I mean? It was a nightmare.”

That first night in hospital he and Chris were told to say goodbye to Lauren. But there was one person who couldn’t: Her sister Simone, for whom Lauren was her best friend. Her whole world.

Tears still swell as Simone remembers that moment sitting around the kitchen table in her northwest Sydney home.

“We went to the hospital and mum and dad were basically told to come in and say goodbye to her that evening,” she recalls.

“And I just kept on screaming: No, no, no, no, she’s not gonna die!

“And I wouldn’t go and see her because if she did pass that day, I wanted to remember her the way she was. Walking out the door saying, I love you, Sim.”

Simone was right. Lauren didn’t die. Twenty years later she’s sitting next to her sister, a loving aunty to her two daughters.

Watch our exclusive video below:

It’s been a long road to get here. Lauren was on life support for more than three weeks after the attack.

After that she had to go through six months of physical and mental rehabilitation at Westmead Hospital, with this masthead recording that extraordinary journey of recovery every step of the way.

Even after it looked like Lauren would defy the odds and live, doctors told the family to brace for the worst.

“They gave my family the worst case scenario that, you know, I wouldn’t be able to talk, walk,” Lauren says today. And yes, she can walk too.

As Simone recalls, beaming at her sister: “We just said: You don’t know her. You don’t know what she’s like.”

Lauren also has a job in the city and drives a car better than most taxi drivers yet two decades ago she was, as she says, “literally learning how to live”.

“It was so hard, but I got there, you know? Learning how to talk, walk and eat.

“When I was 19 years old, it was, it was really challenging. But I got there. I pulled through.

“The best thing in life is doing what people say you can’t do.”

Watch Lauren’s journey through rehab in our video below:

The one dark cloud still hanging over the family is that Lauren’s attacker — a repeat offender who has never shown remorse — will be eligible for parole in July next year, which makes mum Christine furious with disbelief.

“Lauren got life. Our whole family got life. Whether it’s physically or mentally, the trauma never leaves you, it doesn’t matter how long it’s gone,” she says.

“All the things that we’ve had to endure over the years because of one person, and now the system gets to decide his future, but we don’t get to decide.”

And yet even when confronted by the worst of humanity it was the best of humanity that pulled them through the darkness.

“We had people write us letters from all over Australia, even from overseas, of support, encouragement, sharing their stories of their dark times. Horrific events and how they got through and recovered.

“And reading those letters, it gave us that hope of ‘It’s going to be okay’.

“We’re going to get through this. Lauren is going to get through this.”

Australian Story on ABC profiles Lauren Huxley on Monday at 8pm AEDT.