Lesley McLennon was removed from her family, along with her brother, when she was 12 years old despite her non-Indigenous father's protests to the police that he cared for his children well. McLennon and her brother were taken to St George's Parkes Catholic Home in Rockhampton. At the age of seventeen McLennon left the home and entered the work force.

McLennon's story was recorded by the National Library of Australia for the Bringing Them Home oral history project and appeared in the associated publication Many Voices: Reflections on experiences of Indigenous child separation, edited by Doreen Mellor and Anna Haebich (2002).