Across town, Madeleine Poover was celebrating her HSC results.

She was among those who achieved a mark of 90 or above for advanced English.

The 18-year-old thanked staff at her school,

were known if they helped in Keeper on track.

They were really helpful and they kind of kept me motivated and reassured me,

so couldn't have done it without them.

We had very low expectations today and they've been exceeded by a big, big margin.

She's planning to take next year off before enrolling in an arts degree at university.

It's not often that you see the father of a teenage girl standing front of television news cameras

to confirm having low expectations for her daughter's exam scores,

but Bill Poover had his reasons to doubt his daughter Madeline's academic performance at this time.

Her studies had been interrupted to say the least.

Just weeks prior, at 2pm on August 3rd, 2011,

18-year-old Madeleine Poover had been alone at her family's home in Mossman,

one of Sydney, Australia's wealthiest suburbs,

where she was studying for those exams,

when a man wearing a rainbow colored ski mask entered her room,

wielding an aluminum baseball bat.

When Madeleine became aware of the intruder,

she jumped out of her chair,

cowered into a corner, and asked the man what he wanted.

The man let her downstairs at the kitchen table and told her to sit down,

...