The Hart Family Murders | #464

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For a limited time, get 50% off your car. about to tell you about Jen Hart just screams that typical narcissistic domestic abuser that's what she is like through and through it's the silent treatment it's the making everybody in the house walk around on eggshells it's flying into absolute rages and then hiding in her bedroom it's like all of the manipulation the like lies it's it's so so just perfect in terms of like this perfect storm of exactly this type of person nothing here is surprising in terms of like how she treats her family worse still Jen also felt the need to exert control over everyone living under her roof all the money Bree earned from her part-time job at Subway went straight into an account that only Jen had access to and surprise surprise the money always came to Bree at least a hundred dollars short still Bree clung to hope that life with the hearts would work out while her foster mums could be overbearing she enjoyed the frequent hiking and camping trips they took her on and when they told her about their plans to adopt Bree was excited to become a big sister as Jen and Sarah promised her she would be Bree said she would frequently find the couple browsing adoption websites for potential children to adopt but here's the weird part that Bree noticed all of the children that Jennifer and Sarah Hart were looking at were black okay Madonna yeah and Bree remembers hearing her foster mum saying things like oh look at this beautiful child isn't she adorable I would love to just have this child and bring her home it sounded like they were browsing for puppies at an animal shelter or something and look this case obviously brings up questions and feelings that people have around cross-racial adoption right it's a tricky one isn't it because like you said with Madonna pointing that out there was obviously a big Hollywood boom back in the day of white celebrities adopting black babies like we all remember that and those kids are growing up now like you can still see them like accompanying their parents um accompanying their often a-lister parents like on the red carpet and whatnot yeah and it did and does feel a bit cringe like I don't know to me because I've really thought about this and I'm like to me it feels a bit cringe because it feels like they're so desperately trying to seem good and virtuous and is this child that they've adopted somehow like meant to be a symbol or a representation of like how noble a person they are or am I just being awfully awfully cynical because at the end of the day if a child who is alone and doesn't have anybody and is is stuck in some sort of horrible nightmarish situation then they go on to be adopted by a family who will love them and provide for them isn't that the best outcome so like who cares who it is it's tricky it like I absolutely get where you're coming from because like it's the ultimate virtue signal really isn't it like it's look then I hate myself for thinking that as well because I'm like no no I totally agree like it's a tricky thing I can see yeah I can see how it is to cynics and that is um because of my unbearable personality where my brain goes first but like I think I'm also with you and like who cares is their life better probably exactly if they've been adopted and they're in a good situation like isn't that just the best thing like there are so many children in the world who just need love and stability and a home and you know parents who care for them like is that the worst thing I don't know obviously the worst thing there's question marks around like how ethical some of the adoptions have been like if the child still has parents and they just can't afford to take care of the child like wouldn't it be better for you to I don't know start a school somewhere or like provide funds for at-risk children so that they can stay with their actual parents rather than just like well I'll take your child and I'll raise them again I don't know it's getting so into the like the nitty-gritty of each individual case isn't it rather than just like the overall feeling we have around these situations and I guess some people will make the argument that they don't like the whole thing because it's like somehow if you adopt a child from a race or a culture that isn't yours then you're somehow robbing that child of their cultural heritage etc which like isn't really a strong argument for me personally I think kids need love they need warmth they need stability they need a home before we even worry about like are their cultural needs being met I just that's just my opinion anyway and I don't think people who adopt cross-racially really need to beat themselves up for not being able to provide that especially if they're meeting that child's needs in every other way it's a nice to have but like yeah and awareness of it as well I think like it's it's and I also I often sound like I think about this all the time I rarely think about this but what is the alternative if we say okay no cross-racial adoptions are we just segregating yeah what are we saying if we say that what are we saying in that case we're saying that like there's somehow such a stark difference between people of different races that we cannot allow cross-racial adoption that feels really regressive to me but at the same time I do find it hard when I look at those situations sometimes particularly with celebrities and very much so in this case with Jennifer and Sarah Hart that is it down to performative virtue signaling rather than what's best for the child how can we tell the difference how can we tell the difference between someone who has really good pure intentions and somebody who was doing performative virtue signaling like it's very very hard to be able to tell literally cannot like this no one's ever going to tell you which one it is you just have to make your best guess and get on with your life I think it's really hard and I think a story that always stuck with me and I think I have said this on the podcast before I can't remember why but Prue Leith who used to be the judge on Bake Off Bake Off um I watched a documentary with her because she which Americans call the Great British Baking Show by the way yes they do why do you find the concept of a bake-off too difficult for a television program maybe they just don't have bake-offs and they're like what the fuck's a bake-off but then you have a dance-off you can figure out what a bake-off is anyway so Prue Leith who was on that has now been replaced by Nigella for the next season did you know that has she really yeah love a bit of Nigella so yes a Prue Leith I watched a documentary with her where she was talking about how she had adopted I think her daughter was Vietnamese Cambodian a Cambodian yeah so she adopts a little girl from Cambodia sorry I know I'm terrible and those black Vietnamese are really haunting you and she basically is like really really and her daughter's like you know a grown woman in this in this documentary and like Prue Leith it was so sad to see her like crying and crying and crying in this documentary because she felt like she had failed her daughter because she hadn't like taught her Cambodian and hadn't like allowed her daughter to be imbibed in like Cambodian culture while she was growing up in London or wherever they were in the UK and I'm like your daughter seems really happy she seems really healthy you gave her a great life like I feel sad that this woman is sat here crying after she has done the best for this woman who is very happy and thriving because she didn't learn Cambodian I'm like come on guys like I get it but I'm like parents are always going to feel like they didn't do enough but I think give yourself a break give yourself a fucking break like I just I'm saying this as a woman who who's bilingual but I'm like if I have a child I'm like I'd love to be able to teach them Tamil will I succeed in doing that when I have to deal with all of the other pressures of being a mother probably oh I'll probably be sad about it but I'll get over it and like that is somebody who is that is my culture and that is my language and I still probably won't be able to do it because life is hard so yeah my friends are in a sort of multilingual household and you had all of the best intentions but she was like it's so hard when your child starts to speak to tell them they're doing it wrong yeah and you're just like you've got to worry about potty training and then biting other kids and like you know there's loads of shit to worry about oh yeah like are they killing frogs when I'm not looking exactly exactly and you're just like you know that the last thing I think parents need to worry about is like am I culturally providing for this child like I don't know I don't know maybe that's just my opinion anyway well it's your show I refuse to make any other qualifiers than by ending everything by saying well that's just my opinion do you 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So aside from Jen and Sarah's obvious desire to build a rainbow family, they assured Brie, who was white, that she was welcome to stay once any future adoptees came home to live with them. But a little over a year after moving in with the Harts, Brie had the rug swiped out from under her in the most brutal way. One afternoon, the couple dropped her off at a scheduled therapy appointment and never came back. This is disgusting. At the end of an otherwise normal session, Brie's therapist explained that her caseworker was waiting outside to take her to a new foster home. No explanations, no goodbyes. All of Brie's belongings had already been taken from the Harts' home. That is diabolical. Isn't it? And what is really diabolical about it for me is the fact that it's not just Sarah and Jen who have done this. Like, there are other people in the system who are complicit in allowing this situation to unfold. Like, the arrangements for her to go somewhere else have already been made. Her belongings have already been moved. And the therapist is told, you can tell her, right? You can tell her. For us, we're just going to go. You can deal with this. Like, how has this been allowed to happen? And how are they then allowed to go forward and adopt children? Because this, this scenario, if you're going to be like, do you know what? We wanted to try fostering and it's really hard. We're really struggling. We don't think we can do this. We'd like to not do it anymore. Okay, fine. That's a conversation to be had. Everything needs to be dealt with sensitively. But like, you're just like, we don't want to do this. We're going to adopt instead. Like, how is that being allowed to happen? Like, why are these people not like, they're not fit. They're not fit to adopt if they can't deal with a foster situation in a more sensitive way. It's really bizarre to me. It's really bizarre. It's awful. Now, as you can imagine, for years afterwards, Bree kept wondering what she had done wrong. But the timing of Bree's abandonment may have been the answer in its own right. Because just two weeks after they ditched their foster daughter, Jen and Sarah, Sarah adopted their first three children. Why are they allowed three in one go? I think it's because they're siblings. Okay, that makes sense. And they don't want to separate them. And it's probably quite hard to find people who are like, we'll take three. I mean, that's probably how they managed to pull it off so quickly. Getting someone to take three is quite difficult, probably. Yeah. And this does make us ask, did the Harts ever actually intend to let Bree build a life with them? Or had the whole project of fostering been about making them themselves look like solid candidates for adoption? And once they got what they wanted, they cast her aside, which in and of itself, how they cast her aside, like I said, should have proven that they were not a solid fit for adoption. But the state's desperate. And I think that is, that's what rings through a lot of this story, is the desperation of the social services and of like the fostering system, the adoption system, and the state to just be like, we need homes for kids. Do you want them? Do you want one? Do you want two? Do you want three? Do you want six? Okay, fucking great. We don't, don't tell us anything else. Whatever it was, Jen and Sarah now found themselves starting a whole new chapter. In March 2006, they became the proud mums to three black children from Texas. Eight-year-old Marcus, his younger sisters, four-year-old Hannah and three-year-old Abigail. The kids had been placed in foster care after their mum was accused of neglect. Although Jen and Sarah were young, and lacking family support, they didn't have to say much to convince the adoption agency that they were the perfect fit. The fact that they were willing to adopt a set of three black siblings at all was convincing enough for the Texas foster care system. So in a matter of months, the children were sent to their new home in the 96% white town of Alexandria, Minnesota, on the other side of the country. Where their new mums seemed eager to show off the poor, disadvantaged kids that they had just saved. Giving themselves an industrial-sized pat on the back. But let's just say, Jen and Sarah weren't quite prepared for the challenge that they had taken on. As part of agreeing to adopt the siblings, Jen and Sarah had agreed to support them with any therapy that they might need, given their rough start in life. But as Jen would later confess on Facebook, by God, did these kids need therapy. Duh! What did you think was going to happen? This is the thing, right? I'm going to tell you what she talks about. Like what they talk about being the problems with these kids. I have no doubt that these kids had challenges. Of course they did. But I don't believe, or we don't have evidence, that it was as bad as Jen is making out on Facebook. Because she has to be the martyr, the hero. Not only is she the martyr, but many of we adopted these three black kids from Texas that were neglected by their mother, they're also completely fucked. So yeah, Jen would write on Facebook things like this. And let's look at one intensely detailed post from Jen's social media page where she described their very first day of motherhood. Shared on the 10th anniversary of the kids' adoption, Jen bragged about the triumph they'd felt at becoming lesbian mothers in rural Minnesota. And this is important. Not only is it like we're saving these black kids, not only are these black kids totally fucking crazy, we're also lesbians in Minnesota and everybody hates us here because we're lesbians. Whenever nobody, nobody seems to give a fuck. Literally no one seems to give a single fuck that they're lesbians with adopted kids. But she's just like, hey, I see you. I see you looking at me. Yeah, we're lesbians. And these are our black kids. Everyone's like, cool. Minnesota nice. And she's just like, fuck off. Like, honestly, it is like that. That's her mentality. So, yes. She basically says it was a huge triumph because it had been so hard because they had adopted these children only to realize the catastrophic challenges each child presented within the very first 12 hours of bringing them home. She said Marcus repeatedly bashed his head on the wall after being denied a Tootsie Roll. Abigail suffered an asthma attack that caused her to stop breathing while Hannah smeared feces on the walls. I need to go to work. She did the Heimlich maneuver after eating so much food she choked. And then, in a grand finale, she projectile vomited all over the place. Jen wrote how she and Sarah were questioning everything that night. But when a social worker shrugged the next day that they should just give the kids wherever they want, Jen's social justice spidey senses were well and truly activated. Because to super mum Jen, this was abhorrent advice. And this is it again. It's like, I'm not saying the social worker didn't say that. I don't know what the social worker said. But whether that was said or not, again, it's another thing. Not only now is the world against her. It's like, even the social workers don't really know what they're talking about. Not like I do. I am a mum and I know what's right for these kids. She'd only been a mum for a matter of hours. But she absolutely knew better than a social worker. Here is a quote from the end of this particularly lengthy Facebook post. We could not give up on these kids. I should hope not after four hours. How can a child even know what they want when they haven't been gifted with what they need? If not us, who? I don't want to go on, but I will. At 25 years old, we didn't have any parenting experience under our belts, but we had boatloads of love, compassion, intelligence, and the natural instincts to navigate these wild and uncharted waters. Yeah. Give me strength. Like, without any of the information that I have, just reading that, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, that person knows fuck all about what it is to be a mother. Yeah. Absolutely nothing. Yeah. And this is, this is just the running theme throughout this. From the very start, generally speaking, Jen was casting herself in the role of a heroine for these kids. It was the beginning of the fabled half-family saga, one that Jen would continue to peddle in rambling Facebook posts right until the very bitter end. Now, it's absolutely true that the trauma children face when placed in care can manifest in all kinds of behavioural problems down the line. Nobody is denying that. But here's the thing. It's impossible to confirm if the physical and psychological issues Jen could have claimed Marcus, Abigail and Hannah had were even real. A lot of what Jen shared on Facebook and with child protection services would later prove to be a load of bollocks. So we have to exercise a bit of scepticism here. Not to mention, Jen also seemed determined to prove that all of these supposed issues, these myriad issues that these kids came to them with were all basically completely cured whilst the children were under her care. I'm so annoyed with myself that I didn't see that coming. Which is what makes me more sceptical about what she's saying because she's not an expert in anything and she somehow manages to cure these kids of all of these rampant issues that she says that they have. Fuck off. No way. I don't think that was ever happening. Jen would also go on to claim that Abigail came to them, quote, "borderline mentally retarded" and Hannah was morbidly obese. But with their boatloads of love and their natural instincts, that all curiously just vanished. Because of course it would enhance Jen's story if she painted an even bleaker picture of the children when they first arrived into her warm maternal bosom. Seems obvious really, doesn't it? Now soon enough the Harts decided that three rambunctious kids just wasn't enough because they had plenty more love to go around. So they went back to the same Minnesota adoption agency seeking three more children of, quote, "any ethnicity" up to eight years old. Well, why not? They did such a good job with the first three. Exactly. Get a brain transplant and crash dieting. Yeah, absolutely. And in 2008, they got their wish. Five-year-old Devonte and his siblings, four-year-old Jeremiah and three-year-old Sierra, came from Texas to live with the Harts for a six month trial placement before adoption. Their mum, Sherry Davis, had lost custody in 2004 after she, and a newborn Jeremiah, tested positive for cocaine. The children had been living with their aunt, Priscilla Celestine, which is a great name. That is a fantastic name. And Priscilla had been not only a woman with a great name, but the ideal guardian. Priscilla worked a stable job, had no criminal record. And most importantly, she wanted to look after these children and she is also blood related to them. Sherry and the kid's father actually had an affair. They were both in love. They were both in love with each other. Sherry and the kid's father actually relinquished their paternal rights to increase the kid's chances of being adopted by Priscilla. And that meant that they weren't allowed any contact with them. But when Priscilla had no choice but to ask Sherry to babysit the kids when she had to work, a CPS worker showed up unannounced at the worst possible time and removed Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra and put them in foster care the same day. Since their biological parents had given up any rights, the kid's adoption was then opened up. Not just to their aunt, but to any interested party. With the Texas CPS system using a process called concurrent planning. This meant that basically whoever was approved first would win custody. Like eBay. Yeah. It's just, again, showing the desperation and showing how, like, are you really putting the kids' best needs first? It's like, do you want to do something fast or do you want to do it right? And they're like, fast, please. Totally unrelated. But this is, I think, maybe the most lateral my brain has ever gone. But very famously, Stephen Sondheim, I can't remember which musical, maybe A Little Night Music. He made the producer and director push the press night for two weeks because he wanted to add a song. And the director goes into a car accident. Complete conniptions. Like, I cannot believe you're expecting me to do this. And Stephen Sondheim just goes, do you want it now? Or do you want it to be good? He also wrote Send in the Clowns the night before A Little Night Music went up. And it's probably his most famous one. Sometimes it can be fast and right. If you're Stephen Sondheim, it is possible. Most of us aren't. Someone get him a job at the Texas Adoption Center. Anyway, despite Priscilla's desperate attempts, Jen and Sarah Hart, a pair of total strangers in another state, won that race. But here's the real kicker. Those two strangers in the completely other state would soon have an allegation of child abuse made against them. It was during Devonte Jeremiah and Ciara's trial placement with the Harts that this first report of abuse emerged. A schoolteacher reported the women to the police after discovering bruising on six-year-old Hannah's arm, which she said she had got by being whipped with a belt. Jen and Sarah denied any responsibility, saying they had no idea how it had happened. And because there wasn't enough evidence to suggest otherwise, the case was closed. And despite this deeply concerning report, the Harts were able to sail through and finalize their adoption of Devonte Jeremiah and Ciara in 2009, with no one from the state of Texas ever checking on them again. As the family of eight settled into Minnesotan life, Jen took on the role of stay-at-home mum while Sarah worked full-time as a sales manager at Herpages. Later that year, the six children were the only witnesses at their mum's wedding in Connecticut. Is that legal? That seems illegal. Anyway, they were the only witnesses because, as Jen put it on Facebook, our support system was so small. Because you alienated all of your own family by cutting them off. Because you're unpleasant to be around. That's why. According to the narrative that Jen was meticulously crafting online, it was the Hart family against the world, united by love. But in the real world where we live, a much darker picture was emerging. Between November 2010 and January 2011, the Minnesota CPS received six allegations of child abuse against Jen and Sarah. The first was when seven-year-old Abigail told a teacher that her mum Jen gave her an owie and then pulled up her shirt to reveal serious bruising on both sides of her torso. According to Abigail, they discovered a penny in her pocket and accused her of stealing. And then Jen bent her over the side of the bath and spanked her repeatedly before pushing her head under cold water with both hands on her neck. This time, the Hart mums surprisingly didn't deny it. But contrary to Abigail's version of events, they insisted the one to blame wasn't Jen. It had been Sarah. Given what we know about these women, this is particularly hard to believe. Not only was Sarah clearly the more passive partner, she was also at work most of the time while Jen was the one at home looking after the kids. And just a month later, eight-year-old Hannah separately disclosed that Jen had hit her for lying. And she also said, in fact, that Jen hit her all the time. And this is the thing that I find really odd about this, is that why don't they just deny hitting the kids at all? Why would Jen and Sarah lie about which one of them was actually hurting the kids? Because the more truth you include in a lie, the more believable it becomes. Yeah. And I guess the kids are saying, even though the kids are saying it's Jen, maybe they can't deny the bruises. Who knows? It could be also because it's Jen's name who's on the monthly assistance checks that come from the state of Texas for adopting the kids out of foster care. So was Jen worried that those funds might be put in jeopardy if she was found to be the one at the center of the child abuse investigation? But like, surely it's not much better if your wife is the one beating these kids? Like, I don't know. So perhaps it's more to do with the unequal power balance at play between Jen and Sarah, and the way that Jen was absolutely determined to dominate the narrative of their story. Maybe Jen just knew her wife would go along with whatever version she wanted her to tell because she'd had Sarah under control for years by this point. And this is also another way for her to control Sarah, but also another way for her to paint herself as even more of a victim and even more of a hero. Because now, not only is she the long-suffering wife of this lesbian power couple that have adopted these children, her wife goes to work all day, comes home angry and beats the children, and she's just stuck there trying to save everybody. Oh yeah. Not only am I fighting for my life as a lesbian, in Minnesota, I'm the best one. Yeah. Whatever the reason, in April 2011, Sarah pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of domestic assault. She received a 90-day suspended sentence, one year probation and community service, and CPS ordered her not to use physical discipline with the children. Was their custody challenged? No. And worse, it was becoming increasingly clear that corporal punishment wasn't the only form of abuse taking place in the Hart home. Around the same time as Abigail's incident, the school nurse called the Harts to tell them that Hannah had been begging her classmates for food and digging around in the bins. And when a nurse got in touch with Sarah about this concern, she dismissively told them, "She's playing the food card. Just give her water." Fortunately, this wasn't quite good enough for the school, so they got CPS involved. Which no school wants to do, by the way. That is like panic stations. Absolutely no school wants to do that. do that for no reason for fun because it's not fun like they're everyone's under scrutiny like it's not something that's done lightly i think there's a bit of a misconception about that yeah now from their interviews with the heart children it emerged that withholding food was one of sarah and jen's favorite punishments for misbehavior when they were confronted about it the mums babbled excuses about the children being high risk and having food issues from their troubled early years but that didn't account for how tiny the kids were cps reported that abigail who was six years old at the time looked like she was just two advising that she'd be seen by a doctor over concerns of malnourishment but the doctor came back saying that abigail was just small shrugging that our biological family history was unknown since she was adopted and as soon as the assessment was over just two days before sarah was going to be born she was going to be born and she was going to be born and she was going to be convicted of domestic assault the hearts pulled all six children out of school they likely realized that if they just minimized the kids contact with other adults all this cps business would go away and one very astute caseworker clocked this at the time they wrote in a report that because these women look normal there was a risk of any issues being fobbed off and falsely attributed to the children's high risk early lives and now the kids were cut off from their peers and teachers the cps worker literally wrote that they risked falling through the cracks and this person was dead on the money they smelled jen and sarah's bullshit from a mile away but as we have seen many times before when it comes to child protective services in this country and the states nothing was done and the hearts were free to take things a step further which is a lot easier when your kids are not in school yeah in early 2013 the hearts decided to escape the prying eyes of the minnesota child welfare system entirely by moving to west lynn oregon just outside portland though the law requires parents to notify the local district if they want to homeschool their kids jen and sarah never actually registered the heart children in oregon now they were really off the grid that's terrifying truly on social media jen painted a rosy picture of life in oregon including lessons by the lake hanging out with their pet chickens and going to music festivals and that last bit became a key part of heart family life while sarah worked to bring home the bacon jen would regularly drag the kids along to vibey new age music festivals across the west coast often for weeks at a time and because this is jen she obviously documented every moment of these trips and she was a big fan of heart family life and she was a big fan of heart family life she shared countless photos of her children throwing peace signs against bright sunsets or holding signs with generic inspirational bullshit like kindness is contagious and this wasn't just fun for jen it was free pr at these festivals jen got to embody the role of the inspiring vivacious queer woman who'd selflessly taken in half a dozen black children and given them lives that they could have only dreamed of basically making her a hero in their peace-loving hippie community and as the sprawling heart family became a fixture on the new age music fest scene its star act quickly became clear davante despite being the middle child davante emerged as the most charismatic and outgoing of the bunch did you see that article recently that is like um people are only having two children like three and up is stopping happening in the uk and i saw someone like comment on it being like middle children disappearing is the most middle child thing i have ever heard yeah yeah i texted my sister she did not appreciate it davante premiered his iconic free hugs sign at one of the festivals which jen insisted on facebook was his idea don't encourage strangers to hug your child what the fuck it's so because these children mean nothing the welfare of these children as if i need to say it mean absolutely nothing to her she's gone from this like mentality of we're going to be in minnesota and like i'm going to pretend like everybody is persecuting me for being in a lesbian couple and like adopting these kids when nobody cares and actually all that's happening is she's getting a load of shit from the minnesotan like adoption center well i say a load of shit the mildest of scrutiny is what i should actually say then she's like fuck this let's go off the grid let's go to portland like not even portland let's go to outside of portland and drag our kids around these new age festivals where she knows exactly the type of person who's going to be there no shade if you're that kind of person who's hanging out at these festivals for the kind of people that are gonna put her on this pedestal that she can just fucking revel in the people who are like only at a festival where she has to meet them there so they're not really gonna be like your neighbors who are like watching you and seeing if the kids are going to be there and they're like functioning on whatever this is her absolute dream and the fact that she gives devontae a free hug sign sums up how much she doesn't give a fuck about these kids and this is where it goes very like jackson five i feel like she doesn't give a shit about any of them except michael who is devontae devontae became known for his trademark wide smile and affectionate nature so like any stage mom worth her salt jenny's got to have it and she ran with it but also like every other stage mom it's because they secretly wish it was them while the other siblings barely featured devontae appeared as the main attraction in jen's countless facebook posts and youtube videos interacting with musicians on stage dancing for hours at home being goofy on camera sometimes jen even took him to festivals alone because why bother with the hassle of five other kids why bother with the hassle of five other kids when you can just take the good one devontae personified the whole vibe jen was keen to show off a happy sensitive black boy showing the world how loving he had become since his white mothers had rescued him but even with devontae as their poster boy the heart's cruel parenting habits persisted behind the scenes and they didn't go unnoticed in june 2013 a friend was disturbed to notice that jen only allowed the children a tiny slice of pizza each during a sleepover and when she discovered that one of them had crept into the kitchen in the middle of the night for another slice jen had doled out a bizarre extreme punishment on all six kids forcing them to wear sleep masks and lie down on an inflated mattress with their arms at their sides for five hours just a few days after this incident another whistleblower called cps they claimed that the kids seemed scared to death of jen and even asked her permission to answer the most basic questions with these troubling reports oregon cps decided it was time to pay the family a visit unsurprisingly they got the welcome wagon from chatty devontae jen bragged that he was famous across the country for his free hugs and the caseworkers noted that he was the only child that she showed any affection towards in contrast the other heart children were extremely reserved and showed little emotion but even devontae's chattiness couldn't hide the fact that all of these kids were extremely small for their ages the cps report noted again that abigail was tiny for her age still jen had an explanation ready she claimed that the family followed a strict vegetarian diet that made them all naturally slender and it was all again frustratingly shrugged off as being due to the children's traumatic pre-adoption years and unknown biohistory during the cps visit none of the children mentioned any abuse not even hannah and abigail who'd previously made disclosures to their teachers but considering that jen and sarah were in the next room that's hardly surprising and the cps workers were definitely not prepared for football fanatic jen's ironclad defense tactics during that cps visit jen hart was noted to dominate the conversation and when sarah did speak her answers were verbatim the same as her wife's and the key line of jen's defense was the lesbian mum's card jen insisted that she and sarah weren't abusive or neglectful it was just that other people were too small-minded to comprehend her family's alternative lifestyle according to jen the small-minded rednecks in their town just couldn't handle them being queer mums as six black kids so they were trying to bring them down jen presented their home as a peaceful queer nirvana where discipline meant silent meditation and the kids were encouraged to work out their feelings through yoga and so being investigated for suspected child abuse jen managed to play the reverse uno card and present herself as the real victim here and if it didn't work no one would do it this time it works as well cps officials concluded that they were unable to determine if jen and sarah were actually guilty of neglect It was an incredible missed opportunity for the Hart kids to get the help they sorely needed. And it might have saved their lives. But that was the last time CPS went anywhere near them. Because the following year was 2014, and the Hart family were about to make their worldwide debut. On the 8th of November, Jen posted to Facebook about an interaction Devonte had had with a customer in line at a grocery store. Essentially, a man had apparently made a comment about Devonte looking like he'd be an athlete when he got older because he was black. And according to Jen, Devonte very gracefully put the man in his place. She wrote this up in a classic, yarn-weaving Jen style, making Devonte seem like the wisest 10-year-old alive. As the sort of feel-good story mums on Facebook share like mad, this post went viral. Jen was interviewed by the Huffington Post, and out came an article entitled, Meet Devonte, the little boy with a big heart. And since this is Jen Hart we're talking about, she couldn't just tell an international news outlet any old boring adoption story. She painted them a graphic picture of Devonte's tragic pre-Hart family life. That's interesting, isn't it? She doesn't know anything about it when CPS ask. According to the article, before Jen and Sarah came to rescue Devonte, he'd already smoked, drank. Handled guns and been shot at, all before the ripe old age of four. And she said that when they adopted their star child, age six, the only words he knew were shit and fuck. Now there's no denying that Devonte and his siblings' original environment was not suitable for children. Their biological mother was battling drug addiction for much of their early lives, and it wasn't in their best interest to stay there. But there's no evidence to suggest that Devonte was a drug addict. But there's no evidence to suggest that Devonte had been exposed to the level of violence that Jen claimed, or that he had such a limited vocabulary at the age of six. It very much feels like Jen saw this moment as an opportunity to take her reputation further, build on the Facebook posts, and make everything seem so much more intense than it really was. Because the smiley, gregarious black boy in the cute fedora was all the more inspiring when you knew the harrowing odds that he'd overcome together. And the only ones to thank for this happily ever after? Well, they were his two white lesbian mums, Jen and Sarah Hart. But of course, mostly Jen. Then came December 2014, when the killing of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked racial reckonings across the country. After a grand jury refused to indict the officer, protesters with the newly formed Black Lives Matter movement took to the streets to protest. They took to the streets in cities from coast to coast in response. And naturally, the Hart family were among the protesters in Portland. It was at this protest that Devonte was photographed, with tears streaming down his cheeks in a tender embrace with a white cop. For a moment in time, it was the photo scene around the world, smacked onto the front page of newspapers everywhere. You've seen it, I promise you, I just looked it up. Devonte wearing his white shirt, his trademark fedora and his free hug sign became a symbol for racial healing literally overnight. Or at least, to some people. A substantial chunk of the internet did not see the photo as a snapshot of genuine reconciliation in a tense political movement. They saw what it was, a cynically staged photo opportunity. The Harts were suddenly the subject of unprecedented media attention. And this time, it wasn't like getting a few comments on Jen's personal Facebook page. There were op-eds arguing over what the photo represented, and discussion threads about why Devonte was really crying. And people online were even speculating on Jen's role in the photo. To a lot of them, it looked like Jen was deliberately posing her adopted black child as a prop in the name of social justice. Which, let's be honest, that's exactly what she was doing. Yep. Needless to say, it was the exact opposite of how Jen wanted to be perceived. After everything kicked off, Jen became reclusive and depressed, with Sarah telling a friend that the whole thing had changed Jen for good. Jen even took a six-month hiatus from social media in 2016, re-emerging on Facebook in the spring of 2017, to announce that the Hart family had moved once again. This time to Woodland, Washington, into the last house they would ever live in. It was here that the now 15-year-old Hannah made her last desperate bid for help. One night in September 2017, at around 1.30am, neighbours Dana and Bruce DeKalb woke up to frantic knocking at their door. When they opened the door to find Hannah outside, they nearly didn't recognise her. Because ever since the Hart family moved in, they'd barely caught so much as a glimpse of the children. But now, here was Hannah. Hannah, bolting inside as soon as they opened the door, saying that she'd jumped from a second-storey window to get out of her house. Hannah told them that her mothers were racists who whipped her with belts and she begged the DeKalbs to hide her. Minutes later, Dana and Bruce heard Jen, Sarah and the other kids calling Hannah's name. When they appeared at the DeKalb's doorstep, Jen explained that Hannah struggled with mental health issues and her behaviour was the result of a rough week. Since it was the middle of the night, they didn't know what else to do. Dana and Bruce accepted Jen's explanation and went back to bed. But at 6.30am the next morning, the entire Hart family was ringing their doorbell. The early hour's visit was jarring enough, let alone all eight of them being stood there. Hannah gave Dana a handwritten note apologising for disturbing their peace and for telling lies to get attention, saying, I'm working on being more honest. To Dana, those didn't really seem like the words of a child. Then Jen proceeded to monologue for nearly an hour about how the kids had all been drug babies while her family stood silently by. Needless to say, as we all would be, Dana was completely freaked out by the whole situation. Her instinct was to call CPS. But her husband Bruce didn't want the drama with the new neighbours. So Dana did the only other thing she could think of. She kept watch from her window and started taking notes. She noticed the controlling way Jen would let the kids out of the car. First getting out herself, then going around opening each door one by one, then sending the kids in single file. Dana also noticed that Devante was the only child who ever did garden work, as she sometimes saw him hauling large bags of dirt by himself. But mostly, Dana noticed that the kids rarely left the house and that the blinds were always drawn. When Dana told her elderly father about her concerns, he took matters into his own hands and reported the hearts to the police in November 2017. But when someone from the county sheriff's office called the DeKalbs to follow up, the dispatcher was dismissive and told Dana it's not illegal to keep kids inside. Even though they sensed something wasn't right, the DeKalbs felt powerless to help. By March 2018, things in the Hart home seemed to have reached breaking point. This time, Devante nervously approached the DeKalbs and begged them for food. He specifically requested non-perishables, including six jars of peanut butter, an arse, and asked them to leave it in a box by the fence for him to secretly share with his siblings. Dana knew then that these children were being starved. And her heart dropped when Devante finally admitted that everything Hannah had told the DeKalbs that night back in September 2017 was true. Devante confirmed that Jen was the main enforcer of the kids' cruel punishments. And while Sarah used to refuse to go along with it, even she had stopped trying. But despite these horrifying confessions, Devante still pleaded with Dana not to confront his mums or to call the police because he was afraid that they would split him and his siblings up. Dana kept taking notes of everything Devante told her, certain that the next time she rang the CPS they would have no choice but to listen. Almost every day from the 15th to the 21st of March, Devante showed up at the DeKalbs' house for food and sometimes several times a day. During this time, Jen kept up her cheerful face, writing in her Facebook diary like nothing was happening, posting a cheery picture of Devante holding a tray full of dirt and claiming they were having loads of fun planting fruit and veggies at home. All the while, he was literally begging the neighbours to feed him and his siblings. Now from here, things get a bit blurry. So here's what we know about the Hart's final days. Devante visited the DeKalbs for the last time on the 22nd of March 2018. And the next day, he was at the DeKalbs' house. the next day they called cps to conduct a welfare check on the family while jen's yukon suv was in the driveway no one answered the door when the cps agent came to visit the same day less than an hour later dana saw sarah's car speeding up the driveway to the house and by the next day the suv was also gone sarah had been scheduled to open the retail store where she worked at 6 a.m on the 24th but at 3 a.m she text her co-workers saying she was too ill to come in on the 25th of march a surveillance camera captured jen at a supermarket in fort bragg california a 10-hour drive from their washington home it was less than 20 miles from the cliff her car would drive off less than 24 hours later at around 3 a.m on the 26th of march a couple sleeping in their van had to turn off alongside the pacific coast highway were awoken by the sound of tires screeching on gravel earlier that night the man had peeked outside when he heard another car parking up nearby and when he got out to investigate now he noticed that that car had gone the man walked to the edge of the cliff and stared into the inky darkness and heard what he thought sounded like a whale coming from below whale as in cry not whale as in aquatic mammal it wasn't until after sunrise that the shocking truth would come to light that morning a german tourist spotted the hearts suv flipped upside down at the bottom of the cliff the incident was initially called in as a multiple fatalities traffic accident when emergency responders repelled down to the wreckage they found the bodies of jennifer and sarah hart inside the car the bodies of marcus abigail and jeremiah were found on the rocks nearby once investigators id'd the hearts they knew they'd only found half the family sierra hannah and davante were still missing two weeks after the crash sierra's body washed ashore and in may when a passerby found a pair of trousers and a small shoe on a mendocino beach the decomposed foot inside came back as a dna match for hannah but to this day davante's body has never been found a day after the crash investigators discovered a card from cps still wedged in the front door of the family's home in woodland washington other than a ripped open bag of chicken feed on the living room floor and some clothing strewn around the floor the house was perfectly neat but it did not look like a home where children lived the kids shared a room containing just two small beds and a mattress on the floor with no decor whatsoever what investigators did find was a fully stocked fridge remember what a strict vegetarian jen said the whole family were well inside the fridge they found lunch meats hot dogs chicken and fresh beef again it's perfectly empty but the house was perfectly neat and of the real Jen. Not only a woman with a fully stocked fridge while her children starved, but also, once again, I can't help but feel like the virtue signalling of, we're very strict vegetarians in this house. A hypocrite of the highest order. The more evidence emerged, the less it looked like a tragic accident. Information downloaded from the car's computer confirmed that Jen, the driver of the car, made no attempt to hit the brakes. The SUV had stopped 70 feet from the cliff edge and then rapidly accelerated to 90 miles an hour before hurtling towards the ocean. There was also no evidence that anyone in the car had been wearing seatbelts. Toxicology tests showed that Jen's blood alcoholism was well over the legal limit. Sarah and the children's autopsy showed significant amounts of the drug diphenhydramine, which is the main ingredient in allergy medications like Benadryl, which is what people take to fall asleep on planes. The high levels of this drug found in the Hart family system suggested that they had been drugged an hour or two before the incident, so they would have been sound asleep when Jen drove them over the edge. Data pulled from Sarah's phone also revealed some disturbing searches. Can 500mg of Benadryl kill a 125lb woman? And how long does it take to die from hypothermia while drowning in a car? It was obvious. This crash was no accident. It was a deliberate, premeditated murder. At first, nobody could believe the seemingly happy Hart family had gone out like this. Their social media presence was all rainbows and smiles. So surely there had to be a mistake. Even as details of the family's history with CPS began to emerge in the press, friends and acquaintances initially refused to believe that Jen and Sarah had ever been anything but loving parents. But most of the examples these 'friends' had, were only what they'd seen online. So basically, exactly what Jen had wanted them to see. Because Jen Hart was actively dedicated to maintaining an online version of her life that bore absolutely no resemblance at all to the real one. It's a skill that is extremely characteristic of manipulative abusers. Managing their public identity is crucial to keeping their private abuses private. When the rest of the world only ever gets to see their curation, it's a waste of time. It makes it easier for victims' claims of abuse to be dismissed. That's exactly what happened. At first. But with her car crashed at the bottom of a cliff, and true stories spilling out, Jen's house of cards finally came tumbling down. Now everyone could see the Hart women for who they really were. But the real question isn't how they duped everyone into believing their lie of a picture-perfect life. It's how they were allowed to get away with it for so long. Investigative journalist Roxanna Askerian tried to answer this question in her 2023 book We Were Once a Family. So let's just make it worse and take a dive into the very fucked up American child welfare system. Because why not? Tragically, in 2006, when Devonte Jeremiah and Sierra were removed from their biological mother, black children in Texas were almost twice as likely to be reported as victims of abuse or neglect than white children. And since the federal government gives generous funding to states who quickly get kids out of foster care into adoptive homes, that meant that there was a financial incentive for the state of Texas to ship these children out to the first family that would take them. Askerian found that Texas is known for terminating the parental rights of children in foster care at a rate that far outstrips the rest of the nation. Creating adoptees that can essentially be farmed out for cash. In 2008, the year Devonte and his siblings were adopted, the state of Texas earned $8.5 million in federal adoption incentives. And the injustice runs even deeper. When Devonte and his siblings' Aunt Priscilla was looking after them, she didn't qualify for the financial support that an external fosterer would have got because she was a relative. This is unbelievable because if Aunt Priscilla had had that kind of support financially from the state, she would have been able to hire a babysitter rather than relying on the kid's biological mum to help babysit the kids when she had to go to work. The mistake that cost her dearly was CPS and ended up having the kids taken off her. And despite the family pooling together around $3,000 to appeal the decision, Priscilla was pipped to the post by the Harts because of what we told you about earlier, concurrent planning. With all of this in the mix, you end up with a system that disproportionately favours outside adopters rather than keeping the kids with their families. Basically, the attitude of the state tends to be that biological families must have fucked up once if the kids landed in foster care. So why even bother with lengthy court protocols to reunite them when we can just as quickly find a new family and wipe the slate clean? As if remaining with your biological family means nothing, if that is even an option. So with that mentality, it didn't even seem to matter that an abuse allegation was made during Devonte Jeremiah and Hannah's six-month pre-adoption trial period. The Texan judge who approved Jen and Sarah's adoption noted that since there were no criminal charges, it was fine to proceed. Jen and Sarah were given the benefit of the doubt, a privilege that Aunt Priscilla never got. Multiple states were involved in this story, made things even murkier as it usually does. The child welfare system, is a huge web of independently operating state, county and city agencies with no universal oversight or rules. And to this day, there is no national database for child abuse allegations in the US. That's shocking. Yeah. Wow, so you can just move from state to state and basically just be like, nah, redo. Yeah. And the Harts use that to their advantage many times over. They first adopt the children from Texas and then they move them to Minnesota. And when CPS in Minnesota started pissing them off, the Harts moved to Oregon and then when it got too hot in Oregon, they moved to Washington. And everywhere they went, people already gave Jen and Sarah a wide berth because they were lesbian mums parenting high-risk children nobody else wanted to take on. The Harts use their protected status to dismiss any criticisms of their parenting as veiled forms of prejudice against their sexuality or their children's race. Painting themselves as victims. So no one could even think about accusing them of victimizing anyone else. By the time the CPS came knocking on that door in Washington, it was too late. And in one crushing final insult to the biological families, they weren't even notified that their children had been murdered. They found out on TV like everyone else. Jesus. Jesus. A year after the crash in April 2019, a jury-led inquest into the manner of death unanimously ruled that Sarah and Jen had died by suicide and that their six children had been murdered by their parents. Now this deliberately vague verdict didn't specify whether it was believed that the women had equally colluded on the plot to annihilate the family. But based on what we know about the dynamics within the Hart household, we lean towards Jen. Being the primary perpetrator. She'd always called the shots. And she was the one behind the wheel. The fact that searches about like, is 500 milligrams going to kill a 125 pound woman were made on Sarah's phone may indicate that she knew what was going to happen and that she was possibly a willing participant. But also Jen could just have used Sarah's phone. I don't buy that, man. I think Jen has control over everything in that house. She's going to have access to Sarah's phone. Absolutely. I think, you know, one last fuck you to take Sarah down with her. She knows it's going to be investigated after they're found dead. And so, yeah, she could have easily used the phone and the presence of Benadryl in Sarah's bloodstream could suggest that she was probably also a victim along with the children. Because it's surprising to me that Jen would be drunk, but Sarah's had Benadryl. Like, yes, yes. But sadly, we'll never know for certain what happened in those last haunting hours. The truth died at the bottom of that cliff with the entire Hart family. If we consider Jen Hart as a family annihilator, which I do, she joins the rare ranks of women who have committed this style of crime. As we've covered time and time before, family annihilation is an overwhelmingly male thing. Research actually estimates that men are responsible for about 83% of cases. In cases of suicidal women who kill their kids, it's usually motivated by fears about who will take care of the children after they're gone. So instead, mothers choose to take the children with them. But for Jen Hart, it was all about control. With Marcus aged 19 and even the youngest approaching teenhood, perhaps she felt that her perfect family was slipping through her fingers. She knew CPS were on to her, and if she couldn't keep those kids, nobody could. Yeah, I think the mounting pressure from CPS and then moving state to state trying to evade it, but it feels like it's going to come to a head at some point, is definitely a trigger. I also think the trigger was the picture that goes viral and all of the backlash she gets from that. Because I think to Jen Hart, that was like the perfect moment. The country is in a racial storm. Everybody is talking about this. She represents what in her mind, and she's described often as this white, woke, lesbian woman, in her mind of like, I am the epitome of what this movement should represent. I am this person, this protected status. I have these black children that I've adopted and look at what a great job I'm doing. And I think much like the music festivals, this is her chance to take that to another level. She thinks, these people are my allies. These people are my people. I'm going to put myself out there and everybody's going to fucking leave. And I'm going to ride this wave. And then when that backfires and people accuse her of what she was, a virtue signaling fucking child abuser, she loses it. Because she is like, she cannot stand that destruction of this persona that she has created. On a global scale too. Absolutely. Oh my God. The scrutiny involved in something like that, that she inserted herself into needlessly. And let's talk about even like the fucking idea of taking a child to a protest like that. Like it's all so abusive. It's all so abusive. And yeah, I think she was probably completely floored by the reaction that she got because she's living on another planet. I agree. I think you're absolutely right. I think that the CPS turn up wherever she goes. I think she probably in the back of her mind knows that she's not going to get away from it forever and they're going to grow up and they'll leave anyway. And they'll tell everybody, how awful she was. And then everyone will know. And it's more likely that they'll believe an adult than when they were children. And she's not going to be able to get new ones because CPS are on a tail all the time. Yeah. So. And it wasn't serving her need anymore. Exactly. If that picture went viral and she didn't get the same fuzzy mums sharing it on Facebook like she did with the Huffington Post article years before that, then what's the purpose? Like she's not getting that feedback that she needs, which is people telling her, oh my God, you're a hero. And she didn't. She didn't. It's the opposite of that. So she's like, fuck this. I'm done. I'm done. Let's go. And like any good family annihilator, she's not like, let me just find another way out of this. It's we all go. We're all done. So yeah, to conclude. Children are, of course, adopted into loving homes every single day and they do get there happily ever after. But this is not that kind of story. The heart story ended in tatters off the Pacific Coast Highway when it became clear that Jen's fairytale vision of her perfect family had crumbled beyond saving. She didn't see those children as real humans in their own right, but as props in a play. Marcus, Abigail, Hannah, Devante, Jeremiah and Sierra became side characters in an overly simplistic story of racial stereotypes. And in the end, the story of the hearts amounts to an incredibly grim collision of failures by CPS, the Texas Child Welfare System, the adoption agency, and the greatest tragedy beneath it all. Those six children were robbed of the full lives ahead of them. And Jen and Sarah never paid the price for what they did. So that's ever bummer. Yeah. It's a really, really sad, very, very, very sad story. I hate it for so many reasons. And this is why I'm here. This is what we talk about, right? Often, this definitely comes out after we've done Golden State Killer, but we were talking there, right? About how people don't do these things for no reason. They commit crimes. They do these things because what they're doing gives them some feedback, gives them some positive, like thing that they need within themselves. And the minute Jen Hart stopped getting that thing, she was like, right, I'm going to hit the self-destruct and family destruct button and fuck you all. It's so diabolical. It's also, you know, that's none of us ever do anything that isn't serving us in some way, right? Like even if it's something that is self-destructive or like you're doing it because you're getting something out of it, whether it's because you feel clean or like the only reason anybody does anything ever is because they're getting something out of it. They might not know it. It might be outside of consciousness, but like that's the only reason anything ever happens. So yeah, that's it, guys. A very sad story. I don't really have anything nice to say at the end of that. Hug your kids. No, I'm really scrambling. Go hug your kids. Take them outside. Let them go outside. That's it. And we'll see you next time. We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. © BF-WATCH TV 2021