Broken Harts, Episode 2: Full Transcript

Hart kids: We are so provided for. We are so provided for. We are so provided for.

Justine Harman: Meet the Hart kids, as they appeared online. This is a family sing-along Jen posted to YouTube back in 2013. Devonte is on the bongo drum. Abigail is holding a guitar but not playing, and Jeremiah is shaking a maraca, while Hannah dances off to the side. They're in a sunny room with a gleaming wood floor, and the shelves behind them are packed with neatly stacked picture books. Happy times, right? It certainly looks that way, especially when Devonte pauses to give Hannah a hug. Is it spontaneous or is the person behind the camera prompting him with a stern glance? We'll never know.

Hart kids: We are so provided for. We are so provided for. We are so provided for.

Justine Harman: We don't know when Jen and Sarah Hart decided they wanted children. Maybe they always wanted to be moms or maybe they just felt like kids were the next logical step. Years after they adopted six children, Sarah would tell a colleague that she wished she'd known it wasn't mandatory to have a big family. She was the oldest of four kids. Jen was the oldest of three. We're piecing together the events that led Jen and Sarah from their early days together all the way to the edge of that 100-foot cliff in California. How did they go from being just the two of them, living in Minnesota, working at a department store, to a family of eight in less than three years? From Glamour and HowStuffWorks, this is Broken Harts. I'm Justine Harman.

Liz Egan: And I'm Liz Egan. We've been looking into the story of the Hart family for the past six months. In public and on Facebook, they looked like the perfect family. Fun-loving, joyful, and wacky in the best way. But as we've learned, sometimes "perfect" is the perfect cover-up.

Justine Harman: In 2004, when Jen and Sarah were in their midtwenties, still living in Alexandria, still working at Herberger's, they took in a 15-year-old foster daughter. Just to give some context, this was the same year Minnesota state senator Michele Bachmann laid the groundwork for her 2012 presidential run on an antigay platform, calling homosexuality "personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement." When thousands gathered on the steps of the Capitol to rally for same-sex marriage, she spoke out to a Christian television network.

Michele Bachmann: There's something that's happening in our schools, and one of the reasons why I felt like I was called to take up this issue is because of the profound impact that this would have on every man, every woman, every child, and the state of Minnesota, because everyone thought this would only impact the 1.3 percent of our population that is a same-sex individual. Again, don't misunderstand. I am not here bashing people who are homosexuals, who are lesbians, who are bisexual, who are transgender. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life. It's not funny. It's sad. It's part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It's anything but gay.

Justine Harman: So this is the backdrop for the world in which the Harts started to build their family.

Liz Egan: You already met Jordan Smith. She was only 19 when she worked with Jen and Sarah at Herberger's. Our field reporter, Lauren Smiley, talked to Smith about Jen and Sarah's first foray into parenthood.

Jordan Smith: They were one of my early role models for what, like, a nontraditional family could look like. I was 19 at the time. The foster child, she was probably 15? I remember one of them sharing with me a lot of, like, "This girl is so difficult. She's awful,” and that she was eating out of the garbage. It felt like mean-girl gossip, you know? Like, "Uh, she's the worst." It didn't feel like they really had interest in developing her as a person and giving her the tools she needed to be a successful adult, and I just felt so sorry for the girl. I wasn't really old enough to realize that, like, these are shitty parents, but even at the time, I just kind of was like, "This is a child. She's struggling." Like, something's not right about this. Like, isn't it your job to make her feel more confident and encourage her to have healthy habits? But, you know, I also grew up in the Midwest, where I didn't see a lot of, like, great parental models happening. I grew up where people still hit their kid in the nineties. Like, in the Midwest, in Minnesota, you became parents at, like, 21 and let's be honest, you're immature. Like, "OK, my brain's still developing until I'm 28 and now I have to develop this other human instead of focusing my energy on becoming the adult I need to become." Herberger's would have this, like, friends and family sale. All the makeup counters were filling the books with a lot of makeovers to, like, drum up more business. So Sarah and Jen sign up their foster daughter up for one of the makeovers as kind of a, like, "Let's bring you into our world a little bit," like maybe this is something she would want to learn about. I was the only teenager working at the counter. They thought it would be fun to have her go with another teenaged girl. So I did her makeover and, you know, I'd say things like she had really pretty skin, which she did. I remember that, for some reason. She was hunched over, like holding herself in. I could tell she did not want to be there. I remember Jen and Sarah, mostly Jen, interrupting and answering questions or being like, "She doesn't talk much." I remember them both being very annoyed with the situation, like, "Oh! We came in to work on a day we're not working and we're doing this nice thing and our foster daughter's being difficult and annoying." I don't remember her being difficult or annoying. I remember her being very insecure and unsure of herself and Jen being very intimidating. I didn't see a lot of empathy coming through. Like, I remember that very clearly and being like, "Huh. I feel sorry for this girl." After Jen and Sarah died in March, their former foster daughter told the Seattle Times that she never ate out of the garbage. She remembered the makeover. She said she was a tomboy back then and never wore makeup, which would explain her slouched posture that day with Jordan.

Justine Harman: The former foster daughter, now in her twenties and preferring to remain anonymous, also told the Seattle Times how she remembers Jen and Sarah showing her pictures of the three young children they were planning to adopt. She was thrilled. Jen and Sarah had told her she was going to stay with them until she turned 18 and now she was going to be a big sister. But that's not what happened.

Jordan Smith: They were applying for the children, the first three. They had gone and visited them, and I remember them being really excited. I didn't apply, like, a critical thinking to the situation at the time. I mean, like if I had my experience now, I'd be like, "You don't seem very excited with the child you have. Why do you want three more?" But mostly I remember hearing it, like, after I left Herberger's, I'd hear that, like, “Sarah and Jen, they got their three kids.” Like, “They're so happy.” I remember vaguely hearing that they dropped the foster daughter off and, like, just abandoned her. And I remember being like, "What the fuck? Cold-blooded. Like, oh, Jesus!"

Lauren Smiley: I suppose their excitement about getting adopted kids, did you get the sense they really wanted to be moms or—

Jordan Smith: I got the sense that they wanted the validation. Being a foster parent didn't have the clout of having children. Like, they want to be like, "We have children that are ours," versus a child we're watching.

Lauren Smiley: Do you mean validation as in, We're a real couple? We're a real…

Jordan Smith: We're a real family.

Liz Egan: Jen and Sarah dropped their foster daughter at a therapist's office and never returned. She never heard from them again. She was moved to a different foster home. Her belongings were already there. She would not become a big sister after all. She told the Seattle Times she remembers feeling abandoned, devastated.

Justine Harman: Two years later, in 2006, Jen and Sarah officially adopted those three siblings from the Texas foster system. Marcus, then seven, Hannah, four, and Abigail, two. On December 26, 2015, in a Facebook post celebrating Abigail, or Abby's, twelfth birthday, Jen wrote, "She was the first of my children I ever held in my arms. Not only is today her birthday, but it also marks the day Sarah and I became mothers. We flew to Houston, Texas, 10 years ago on Christmas Day to meet our first trio of children. Due to a plethora of issues that came up with our flight and then finding the hotel had burned down, we wouldn't meet the children until the next day, December 26, 2005. We walked into the foster home, a bundle of nerves and excitement. The foster mother called Abby from the upper level. This dainty little peanut walked out, grabbed the railing, walked down the stairs, stood right at my feet, and held out her arms as a gesture to be picked up. I lifted her and she immediately nestled her head right into my chest with her tiny arms gripped around me. Genuine love oozed out of every pore of my body. I will never know what it's like to birth a child or the feeling of holding your newborn for the first time, but I imagine the feeling is much like what I experienced with Abby."

Liz Egan: We'll get more into the adoption process later, but just to give you some quick background. Marcus, Hannah, and Abigail fell into several categories that might have made them hard to place with adoptive families. They were black. Black children are overrepresented in foster care and less likely to be adopted out of it, and it can be more difficult to find families willing to take on multiple siblings. Jen and Sarah had their work cut out for them. They were young. They had no family in the area, and overnight they became mothers of three.

Justine Harman: Ten years later, on the anniversary of the day Jen and Sarah brought Marcus, Hannah, and Abigail home to Minnesota, Jen would revisit their first night as moms in a Facebook post. The post is accompanied by Jen's profile picture. Jen and Sarah Hart, cheek to cheek, their faces mostly hidden behind big sunglasses. Here's what she—and bear with us; this is long, but we want to give you a sense of how much Jen really shared on Facebook.

Liz Egan: “A different kind of Mother's Day. March 3, 2006. With temperatures in the teens and an abundance of snow on the ground, I wondered what their reaction would be as we paced back-and-forth peering out the front windows while clenching our phones in anticipation of their arrival. The three-hour flight from Houston seemed like days. Nearly two years of our lives had been dedicated to making this moment a reality and then, bam, parenthood times three.”

Justine Harman: Jen continues the lengthy post with a rumination on their first day as parents.

Liz Egan: “All the challenges of a lesbian couple trying to break through barriers in a rural community in Minnesota just transformed into a story of hope and triumph. The social worker pulled up in a silver sedan, and out came three little humans that gifted us with motherhood. My heart pounded with pure love and the strength of a million drums as we embraced and welcomed them to their home for the first time. To say this was an unforgettable day would be an enormous understatement. It was unforgettable in all the ways we weren't expecting. We had no idea what challenges we would be facing in the coming months, years. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like for a child that had lived their entire life with inconsistency, abuse, and neglect, to be swooped 1,200 miles away to a new place with the promise of ‘This time it will be different.’ This is how the first 12 hours of motherhood was for us. The youngest urinated anywhere but the bathroom several times and fell down a flight of stairs, resulting in a bloody gash on her chin. The middle child pulled out chunks of hair and smeared feces on the wall and gorged herself with food until she started choking and needed the Heimlich, resulting in episodes of projectile vomiting. The oldest banged his head repetitively on a rock wall until we were able to safely restrain him. Blood was involved. This was a result of not giving him a king-sized Tootsie roll that he requested at 9:00 PM. It took hours to calm him and get him to a place where we could leave him in his room to sleep. We were physically and mentally obliterated by this time. We went to bed absolutely terrified as a million thoughts ran through our minds. As we drifted off to sleep, we were abruptly reminded that our day was far from over. Loud crashes, banging, and strange sounds/voices from above us, resulted in us sprinting upstairs to find the eldest in a closet. He told us he was possessed by demons as he growled, clawed, and spoke in multiple voices, while continuing to thrash, bite, and bang his head on the wall. My heart was breaking and I was terrified. I was terrified for him and it would be disingenuous if I didn't admit I was afraid of what he could do to others as well. Hours passed before we were able to get him to sleep that night. Just when it seemed like we could breathe again, the youngest had an asthma attack and stopped breathing. A 1:00 A.M. E.R. visit followed. I didn't sleep at all for the first 48 plus hours of parenthood. I cried, a lot. What had we done? We had no experience with these kinds of things. We questioned everything. When the social worker called to check in after the first night, we relayed everything. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Her response, ‘Just give them whatever they want.’ We were dumbfounded. That's it? That's the golden advice? In that moment, I knew what to do. We could not give up on these kids. Before we were matched with these children, they were going to be separated and adopted into two different families, with the oldest placed in a residential treatment facility. How can a child even know what they want when they haven't ever been gifted with what they need? If not us, who? 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 unchartered waters. There was no way on earth we were going to toss these children back into an incredibly broken and abysmal foster care system. Here we are, one decade and three more kids later. Ten years ago today, we became mothers and began the grandest adventure of our lives. Through the spectrum of despair and utter joy, I give thanks to all of us who have joined this journey of the hearts. Look what love can do. Come assist in writing the next chapter with us. Love, love, love.”

Justine Harman: The adoption records from Marcus, Hannah, and Abigail are sealed, so it's hard to fact-check Jen's claims of health or behavioral issues, but there is no evidence that Abigail, the youngest, had asthma. We also can't verify whether Marcus was going to be placed in residential treatment. The sibling Jen was referring to here may have been the older brother of the Davises, the second set of siblings adopted by the Harts. Kids Sarah and Jen hadn't even heard of back in 2006. Maybe Jen, 10 years later, was just getting the kids mixed up. There were six of them, after all. Every mom calls her kids by another kid's name at some point, but the night was so momentous for her, one can't help but wonder if she was going for drama over truth.

Liz Egan: Can you imagine if your mom posted something like this about you on Facebook?

Justine Harman: Remember, at this point, the Hart kids were teenagers. Marcus was 17, Hannah was 14, and Abigail was 13.

Liz Egan: Maybe they never saw their mom's Facebook posts, but if they did, they would have been old enough to be completely mortified. Jen and Sarah must have gotten into the groove, because not long after they welcomed their first three kids, a picture of their new family of five appeared on an adoption agency website. They were smiling. Everyone looked happy. This time Jen and Sarah were seeking up to three more kids of any ethnicity, up to eight years old. Two years later, in the spring of 2008, they took in three more foster kids. Five-year-old Devonte and his younger siblings, Jeremiah, four, and Sierra, three.

Justine Harman: The Davis siblings were also from Texas, and they'd been removed from their mother's home in Houston. According to court records, she was a crack-cocaine abuser and was forbidden contact with the kids. The records show that Jeremiah had tested positive for cocaine at birth and the kids' mom had tested positive for cocaine after Sierra was born. They'd been living with their paternal aunt, Priscilla Celestine, for five months. She'd moved from a three-bedroom apartment to a five-bedroom place to make room for them, but then one day a CPS worker made a spontaneous visit to their aunt's home and found their mom babysitting. The consequences were swift. Devonte, Jeremiah, and Sierra were removed from their aunt's home and put into foster care. Shonda Jones, Celestine's attorney, said Celestine had been called into work for an extra shift and needed child care in a pinch. She was trying to keep her job, so she scrambled for child care and called their mom, who she says was clean at the time.

Justine Harman: Jones met the family 10 years ago, but she still remembers their case. Here's how she described it to Lauren.

Shonda Jones: The father's rights were being terminated because I think he had alcohol problems and the mother had drug problems, and so that's why their rights were terminated, which I don't take issue with that. In that instance, that was a prudent thing to do. But I have always taken issue with in this case is the harsh manner in the way that they dealt with Ms. Celestine. There was nothing in her background whatsoever, probably never even had as much as a driving ticket. And to this day, it just seems so strange. Like, I don't understand, what is the rush? I do think that race plays a part. I think, absolutely, I think race is playing a part. You know when people are sitting in an audience thinking that, OK, well, why did the judge just rule that way? I would think, if I was trying to adopt a kid and you had a family member that wanted to adopt them, I personally would think that's great. Why should I try to interfere with a family member's adoption of their own family, right? That should kind of like be a clue right then and there that this is a person you don't think can operate in the child's best interest.

Justine Harman: Let's pause here for a second on that point. Devonte, Jeremiah, and Sierra had an aunt who wanted them. She really wanted them, but instead they were sent to live with Jen and Sarah Hart, who were soon to be under investigation for child abuse. Yes, you heard that right. We'll get into more on that later.

Liz Egan: But first we want you to know a little more about the Hart children, who they really were as best as we can piece it together from Jen's Facebook posts and our conversations with people who knew them. First, there was Marcus. The one with the big, floppy hair. He loved to read and devoured Twilight in one sitting. He wanted to change the world. One Christmas, according to his mom, he asked for a world without cancer.

Justine Harman: Hannah was the spunky one with the closed-mouth smile. Her front teeth were missing. Jen's Facebook post describe her as dancing and singing. Once, she told her mom she couldn't concentrate on subtraction because she had a song stuck in her head. She must have been a courageous kid too, because she would later jump out of her bedroom window and run to the neighbor's house to ask for help.

Liz Egan: Next up, Devonte, whose face you might remember from a photo that went viral in 2014. Devonte was the boy hugging a cop, tears streaming down his face. He was known for wearing a “Free Hugs” sign wherever he went. He loved animals and hated Donald Trump. He appeared to have a special bond with Jen. He may have gotten special treatment as a result.

Justine Harman: Abigail, known as Abby, had big brown eyes and wore glasses. She loved lime green, yoga, and exploring the wilderness. She had homemade strawberry shortcake on her birthday. All the Hart kids were arrestingly beautiful, but when you look at pictures of Abigail's face, you feel like you can see the elegant woman she might have grown up to be.

Liz Egan: Jeremiah wore glasses too. They called him the J Man. He was stoic, a survivor. Jen said he wasn't expected to live more than a few days when he was born, what with all the drugs coursing through his system. Instead, he made it to 14.

Justine Harman: And last but not least, there was Sierra. She was another animal lover. She adored her kitten, Sebastian, and pulled him around the house in a cardboard box. In one of Jen's final Facebook pictures, we see her holding one of her brother's hands, backs to the camera. She's wearing a bathing suit and her shoulder blades are so pronounced, they look like little wings.

Liz Egan: In the past several months, Justine and I have seen hundreds of pictures of the Hart kids, but we only have a handful of recordings of their voices. Here's one from 2012. You can hear the kids giggling in the background and Jen's voice as she hands Jeremiah an earthworm.

Jen: You ready?

Jeremiah: Yes.

Jen: What are you doing?

Jeremiah: I was excited.

Jen: Try again. Can you try not to throw him this time?

Jeremiah: It's like he's trying to kiss me.

Jen: Maybe he loves you.

Justine Harman: Up next time, on Broken Harts.

Speaker 10: Yeah, I see them. They're right over his head.

Speaker 11: I know it doesn't look like it, but that bird is really a dove asking us for world peace. No more wars.

Speaker 10: When I say that Jen was good, she was good. At the time we were thinking, Wow! Phenomenal parenting—you're not exploiting your children. We learn now that there was some abuse charges in Minnesota. They're fleeing to Oregon, so there's probably more of a reason why she didn't want to go on national TV.

Justine Harman: Have you seen Jen's Facebook?

Speaker 12: Jen loved Sarah to an insane degree.

Liz Egan: Broken Harts is a joint production between Glamour and How Stuff Works with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Harts is cohosted and cowritten by Justine Harman and Elisabeth Egan, and edited by Wendy Naugle. Lauren Smiley is our field reporter. Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor-in-chief. Julie Schenn and Deanna Buckman, head of the business side of this partnership. Joyce Pendola, Pat Singer, and Luke Zaleski are our research team. Jason Houck is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works along with producers Julian Weller, Ben Kebreck, and Josh Thame. Special thanks to Jenn Lance. Have questions for us about this podcast? Reach us on Twitter @glamourmag. For access to exclusive photos and videos and documents about the case, visit glamour.com/brokenharts. If you like what you heard, leave us a review.