Encore: Love, jail, Jesus, and pubs — a tangled tale of four very different parents

Australia Broadcast Center

04-07-2025

Lech Blaine grew up in a big family in country Queensland, where his dad Tom ran pubs for a living.
He had six older siblings, who had come to the family as foster kids before he was born.
It was a happy, knockabout, sports-obsessed childhood. But in the midst of all the love and warmth, Lech's mum Lenore lived with a creeping sense of dread.
She knew that one day, the troubled biological parents of three of the children in the family would appear in their lives.
Michael and Mary Shelley were Christian fanatics wandering from place to place, in and out of jail and psychiatric hospitals, and notorious for stalking politicians and judges.
One evening, when Lenore was at home with some of the children, Mary Shelley knocked on her door, changing the family's life forever.
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First broadcast in December 2024.
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