Jennifer Hart, the Washington woman who drove her family off a California cliff, blamed her adopted children and her lesbian lifestyle for most of the family’s issues.
Jennifer Hart, 39, intentionally drove her car off a cliff last month, killing her partner Sarah Hart, 39, and 3 of their six children – Abigail, 14, Jeremiah, 14, and Markis, 19.
12-year-old Cierra Hart’s body washed up on a beach just north of the crash site a week later.
Two children, Devonte Hart, 15, and Hannah Hart, 16, are still missing.
A coroner determined that Jennifer was legally drunk and that Sarah and two of the children had been sedated with Diphenhydramine, the main active ingredient in Benadryl.
42 pages of documents obtained by the Oregon Live newspaper via an open records request shows Minnesota Child Protective Services had the earliest contact with the doomed Hart children after receiving 6 reports of possible abuse and neglect from November 2010 through January 2011.
All of the reports were connected to biological siblings Abigail and Hannah who were adopted in 2006.
Oregon officials were unaware of a 2008 report that Jennifer injured Hannah or that Jennifer pleaded guilty to criminal abuse of Abigail until Sept. 24, 2013.
An Oregon doctor who evaluated the children in late 2013 found they were underweight and short for their age range – signs that they were being starved and severely malnourished.
Yet the agency closed its investigation 5 days after reviewing the doctor’s report that concluded evidence of neglect were “inconclusive”.
The records showed a pattern of lies, deception and excuses told to CPS officials by Jennifer Hart, the children’s main caregiver.
Her partner, Sarah, pictured center with Jeremiah, left, and Devonte, was the family breadwinner who worked a minimum wage job as a cashier at at Kohls. Sarah rarely went on road trips with Jennifer and the children because she had to work.
During one road trip Jennifer and the six children stayed at the home of a family friend for two weeks.
The friend told a reporter she called CPS after she observed Jennifer withholding food from the children as punishment for eating a pizza the night before.
The friend said she observed Jennifer eating a large meal while her hungry children watched.
The Harts denied allegations of abuse and neglect. They claimed they were lesbian vegetarians who were targeted due to their alternative lifestyle while living in a Midwestern town. They said they moved to liberal Oregon where they would better fit in.
A CPS report said Jennifer Hart “was adamant that many of the family’s issues stemmed from others not understanding her family’s alternative lifestyle.”
The women blamed the children’s emotional and psychological problems for their issues with food.
School officials notified child welfare authorities that Abigail, the middle daughter, ate off the floor and picked through the garbage for food.
Records show Abigail, then 6, was the size of a 2-year-old.
The school eventually stopped telling the Harts that the children took food at school so that they wouldn’t be punished, according to Oregon Live.
Facebook images of the children holding food conflicted with reports that they were starved to stunt their growth so the Harts could maintain control over them.
Jennifer told a CPS worker that Hannah, who was missing her two front teeth, was “morbidly obese” and had food issues when she was adopted. But photos taken around the time of her adoption shows 4-year-old Hannah was a normal weight child who had all her teeth.
Two women that Oregon case workers spoke to described Hannah and her biological brother Markis as the particular targets of Jen Hart’s abuse.
One of the women said that Jennifer Hart told her that Markis, the oldest of the six children, tried to kill her but that Devonte saved her. Jennifer described Devonte as “very violent” after he suffered abuse at his biological mother’s home. She said Devonte was diagnosed with a mood disorder and ADHD. But she stopped his medications because she didn’t believe in the diagnoses.
Jennifer has publicly said Devonte was shot at in early childhood, but she told a case worker that he had a gun held to his head.
Jennifer told another case worker that Devonte was famous around the country for his free hugs.
The boy gained Internet fame when a viral photo showed him embracing a white officer during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2015.
Friends say Jennifer may have been jealous of the attention Devonte received. She kept the children indoors and she claimed the family received death threats and a cross was burned on her lawn. But police do not have records of 911 calls from the family. And neighbors say the cross burning incident never happened.
Records obtained from Minnesota CPS showed Jennifer and Sarah appeared to be normal and can talk convincingly about the children having high needs and mental health issues related to food. “Then people tend to assign the problems to these children,” the Oregon worker wrote that the Minnesota worker told her.
“Without any regular or consistent academic or medical oversight, … these children risk falling through the cracks,” the Oregon worker wrote in her report.
Child welfare agencies in Minnesota and Oregon have since retrained their case workers to spot signs of abuse.
Several U.S. states and counties have laws specifically banning adoptions by same-sex couples.
The Harts showed a pattern of moving from state to state whenever child welfare workers opened investigations into their family.
Everywhere they went friends and strangers called in reports of the couple abusing and neglecting the children.
The Harts took their children on a final road trip after a case worker visited their Woodland, WA home on March 23. The family’s wrecked SUV was spotted at the base of a cliff 3 days later.
A vigil is being held for the Hart children in Peninsula Park in Portland, OR on Saturday, April 28 at 12 noon.
