TRAVEL, meeting boys and nights out with friends are rites of passage in any young woman's life.But Lauren Huxley has missed out on those crucial experiences, instead spending the past 2½ years recovering from the horrific injuries she sustained at the hands of Robert Farmer who bashed her repeatedly, doused her in petrol and set her house on fire as she lay semi-conscious in the garage of her Northmead home.Robert Black Farmer, 39, was last week found guilty of attempting to murder Ms Huxley, detaining her for advantage and damaging her home via fire.During the sentencing submissions in the Supreme Court yesterday, Ms Huxley's older sister Simone read a victim impact statement Ms Huxley had written just days before.Ms Huxley, now 21, said some of the beauty had been taken from her world as a result of the attack and that she now lived in fear, worrying that something similar could happen again."I feel nervous in new situations and I'm very cautious," she wrote."I don't trust new people, especially men."Ms Huxley's statement also revealed a young woman trying to get her life back after the senseless attack."This has changed my life forever," the statement said. "It's like I'm starting all over again and building a new life but it will never be the same.""I lost a large part of my life when I was in hospital and I will never get that time back," she wrote, referring to the 23 days spent in intensive care and the six months of rehabilitation. "I lost the last of my teenage years," the statement said.The court heard Ms Huxley would not study or work as she did before the attack and found it hard to remember new words."Some days I feel like I'm improving and other days are harder," she wrote.Many of Ms Huxley's friends were meeting boyfriends and travelling overseas but she had missed out on those things and found it difficult to meet new people, the court heard.Farmer's lawyer, Carolyn Davenport, SC, said that her client maintained his innocence and would continue to fight for his freedom.She said Farmer felt his conviction was "a gross miscarriage of justice" - a phrase at which Ms Huxley's parents, Christine and Patrick, and her sister Simone shook their heads in disbelief.The Crown prosecutor, Christopher Maxwell, QC, said that Farmer's crimes were among the worst of their kind. They were aggravated by his continued denials and the fact that he had doused her in petrol as she lay defenceless."This prisoner suffers no psychiatric or psychological conditions," Mr Maxwell said, "and because of that, and because there is very little known about how his mind operates, the Crown submits he must be viewed whenever released at some distant stage into the future … [with] great caution."It's quite clear that this man at the moment is an extremely dangerous person."Mr Maxwell described the attack on Ms Huxley as a calculated act of brutality that demonstrated "disdain … and a lack of humanity".He called for the maximum 25-year term and asked Justice Peter Hall to fix the term without possibility of parole.Farmer will be sentenced next month. with AAP