He was a leading brain injury specialist, she a Benalla mother willing her critically injured daughter to keep fighting.

With a fractured skull, acquired brain injury and broken jaw, the diminutive teenager was in a critical condition and the prognosis was grim.

She was expected to die. If not, remain in a vegetative state forever.

“What do you think?,’’ he asked.

“She will get better’’ was the prompt reply.

“Well, they say that mothers usually know more than anything ... I hope you are right,’’ he replied.

And she was.

It was March 2002 and Helen and Ian Barker were living on pure adrenalin, the Royal Melbourne Hospital intensive care unit a far cry from their family home at Benalla.

“We got the phone call just before 10.30 the night it happened,’’ Helen said.

“At first I thought Anj had been in a car accident when they told me there had been an incident and that she was being transferred to Wangaratta hospital.’’

On arrival at the hospital, they were advised not to see Anj -- her injuries simply too horrific.

“They told us they didn’t think it would be a good outcome,’’ Ian said.

A helicopter was on its way from Melbourne with a team on board that had the insurmountable challenge of keeping Anj alive until she could reach a metropolitan hospital.

“When we saw her, her face was bruised and swollen, her neck and chest the same, you could only really tell it was her if you studied her closely,’’ Helen said.

“Blood and brain fluid were leaking from her ear.

“I told her if she could come back to us and have a good life please keep fighting but if she couldn’t then we would understand.

“I knew when she survived the trip she would make it.’’

With Anj enroute to Melbourne, her parents embarked on the longest trip along the Hume Freeway they would ever undertake.

It was still unclear what had happened ... why was their girl fighting for her life?

“I rang the police to check how Anj’s boyfriend was as I thought they had been in an accident, that is when they told me that he had bashed her,’’ she said.

The violent and vicious assault had occurred just two blocks from the family home in the grounds of the Barkley Street College campus.

“If we had been outside when it happened we would have been able to hear her scream,’’ Helen said.

Anj, 16, was trying to break up with her then 20-year-old boyfriend, a rite of passage for any young woman.

The sporty and popular student, who broke high jump records and had started debutante ball training the night before, would not regain consciousness for the next three weeks following the brutal attack.

“He smashed her head into a metal bench, kicked her in the head, tried to strangle her,’’ Helen said.

He stomped on her head so hard the imprint of his shoe was visible on the side of her face.

She was left like a rag doll, motionless on the ground.

Medical staff later described the back of her head as the consistency of jelly.

To their credit, the family do not want to focus on the perpetrator who was jailed for a minimum of 71/2 years, nor the brutal attack that changed their lives forever.

The saying goes that love knows no boundaries.

Well never has this adage been truer.

This is a tale of love, determination, strength and guts, of parents’ love and a daughter’s fighting spirit in the face of adversity.

“Initially it was all doom and gloom,’’ said Helen.

“Nothing they could tell us was positive, but we knew Anj was a fighter and knew she was determined.’’

Anj woke up after three weeks but she was unresponsive and her face expressionless.

She was suffering post-traumatic amnesia.

Ian would carefully move each of the joints in her body three times a day to keep them supple.

This process would take three hours each time.

“Her arms were locked and her feet ballerina-style due to the brain injury,’’ he said.

“So we had to keep them moving.’’

It was five months before Anj could move her tongue to her lips and nine months before she could move a finger.

Her limbs were injected with botox and then plastered for weeks at a time to try and straighten them.

Nourishment came from a tube into her stomach.

Each treatment came with excruciating pain and her parents and younger brother Glenn watched on with a feeling of helplessness.

Glenn once aptly described the situation in a school essay.

“I can hear her moaning in pain through the wall as Dad transfers her from her wheelchair to her bed.

“She can’t walk, she can’t talk.

“He destroyed my beautiful sister.’’

Anj was moved from the Royal Melbourne Hospital two months after the attack to a rehabilitation hospital in Parkville that specialised mainly in stroke victims and amputees.

But her stay there was time-restricted and the only other option was a nursing home linked to the facility so she could keep undertaking some sort of rehabilitation.

She was the youngest resident to have stayed there.

Anj’s fight was only just beginning and her parents had one on their hands too.

It would be more than three years before she would return home to the family house and in that time one of her parents was by her side each day.

“We have had to fight for everything and push so hard to get help with her rehabilitation,’’ Helen said.

“She was having a different physio every three months and while they were good they did not know where she was up to, we didn’t seem to be getting as far as we wanted to,’’ Helen said.

“As a victim of crime she received $7500, which is a disgrace.

“Imagine how much more improved she would be if she had of had access to constant rehabilitation?”

The couple kept fighting and recruited a physiotherapist and speech pathologist to who Anj still gives the thumbs up.

The result was that she made huge progress in her recovery.

She started using a spelling board and sign language to communicate, before moving onto a computer that would speak for her.

Fast forward to 2010 and Anj is living with her parents at Benalla and continuing to improve each day.

“We would like to thank the Benalla Trust and the Benalla community for all their support over the past eight years,’’ Helen said.

The Barkers defied the experts who told them to place her in a nursing home for life.

“There was no way we were going to do that,’’ said Helen.

“I do still grieve about what her life would be if this hadn’t of happened.”

“She is so determined; we see something new every day,’’ said Ian.

It has been eight years since she was attacked and the family home has been modified to accommodate Anj and all the equipment she needs.

She has her own purpose-built bedroom, bathroom and study.

Her parents have constructed a hoist in the carport to allow her to practise walking.

It took until 2007 for Anj to be able to converse in sentences and at times it is still difficult to understand her speech.

“I don’t remember much of the attack, thank God,’’ she said.

“I remember the nursing home was pure hell, I barely left my room.”

With her constant smile and wicked sense of humour, you would be hard-pressed to tell that Anj lives in constant pain from spasms, bone calcification and osteoporosis.

“I walk every morning,’’ she says proudly of her trip between the bedroom and lounge room that often takes in the garden.

She showers herself with a small amount of help from a carer and proudly tells everyone how she can shampoo her own hair.

Anj is learning to regain her balance, and has even tried standing to make a coffee.

“I have slaves for that though,’’ she jokes.

Her recovery has been nothing short of remarkable.

“From dead, to walking and talking,’’ Anj said.

Rather than let her disability hinder her life, Anj has become an advocate for victims of domestic violence.

She has travelled Australia telling school children her story and presents a 16-minute documentary on the incident that changed her life.

“I urge them to tell someone that loves them and to break it off, if that is happening to them,” she said.

Anj is a representative of the Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance and an ambassador for the Summer Foundation whose key aim is to change human service policy and practice related to young people in nursing homes.

She has advocated to politicians, represented Australia at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and continues to fight for a national no-fault insurance for victims.

Anj has recently started a community leadership course through RMIT.

She is like any other young woman, who likes men, going to the pub, music and socialising.

Her colourful bedroom is decorated in purple with butterflies and photos adorn the walls.

“I am the same as everyone but everything is locked in my brain,’’ she said.

“I have to live for now and work on getting better.

“I am my own woman, bring it on.’’

She knows there is a long road ahead but eventually Anj wants to live in Melbourne independently.

The bond between Anj and her parents is evident; they have been through so much.

They disagree at times but always have a joke and a laugh together.

It has taken the determination and strength of character from Anj and the enduring love from her parents and brother to get her to where she is now.

Isn’t it fortunate that mothers often do know.