Two white women. Six adopted Black children. A life that looked perfect from the outside road trips, hugs at protests, rainbow flags waving behind smiling faces. One photo went viral: Devonte Hart, tear-streaked and wearing a fedora, hugging a white police officer during a Ferguson rally. It was shared as a symbol of unity and hope.
But it was a lie.
Behind that carefully curated image was a family shaped by fear, starvation, and silence.
Background
Jennifer and Sarah Hart met while attending Northern State University in South Dakota. Jennifer studied education; Sarah majored in special education. They became a couple in the early 2000s and eventually moved to Minnesota, where they legally married in 2009, shortly after same-sex marriage was legalized in some states.
Both presented themselves as progressive, idealistic, and devoted to social justice. They were deeply active on social media, where Jennifer who was more publicly visible posted photos of their road trips, vegan meals, music festivals, and the six Black children they adopted from Texas between 2006 and 2008.
The children Markis, Hannah, Devonte, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Sierra were all from troubled backgrounds. Most were siblings or half-siblings. Their biological families had struggled with poverty, addiction, or abuse, and the children were removed by child protective services.
To outsiders, the Harts appeared to be saving lives creating a safe, inclusive, multiracial household. The reality was far different.
Warnings
By 2008, the Hart family was already on the radar of child welfare officials in Minnesota. A teacher reported that one of the daughters, Hannah, had bruises on her arm and said she was beaten with a belt. When confronted, Sarah admitted to spanking the child. She pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault and was sentenced to community service. Jennifer wasn’t charged but records showed that she was the dominant figure in the household, often controlling all interactions with the outside world.
Despite the warning signs, the couple continued receiving support from those around them. Friends described them as “good-hearted” and “progressive.” Many believed the children were simply “troubled,” and that Jennifer and Sarah were doing their best.
Inside the home, things were deteriorating. Neighbors and teachers reported that the children were underweight, frequently hungry, and showed signs of psychological distress. Devonte once told a teacher that his parents withheld food as punishment. Other reports described the kids rummaging through garbage at school and begging classmates for food.
In 2010, after growing scrutiny in Minnesota, the Harts abruptly moved to Oregon. The abuse didn’t stop it just got harder to detect.
Devonte
In Oregon, the family lived a quieter life, homeschooling the children and limiting outside contact. But the carefully crafted social media image continued. Jennifer filled Facebook with filtered photos of smiling kids holding protest signs, hugging dogs, dancing at music festivals.
One post in particular went viral. It was late 2014, and Devonte was photographed hugging a white police officer at a Black Lives Matter rally in Portland. He wore a brimmed hat and held a “Free Hugs” sign. Tears streamed down his face. The image exploded online a visual balm during the Ferguson unrest. National media called it healing, symbolic, important.
But people closest to the family began to worry. A neighbor said Jennifer would force the children to pose for hours to get the “perfect” image. Others noticed the kids always looked small for their age. Some neighbors even suspected the children were being drugged to keep them quiet.
In 2017, the family moved again this time to rural Washington, near the California border. That’s when the final cries for help began.
Escape
In March 2018, neighbors Bruce and Dana DeKalb were startled when Devonte started showing up at their house asking for food pleading for bread, fruits, anything. He told them his moms wouldn’t let the kids eat unless they behaved perfectly.
A few days later, one of the girls, Hannah, jumped out of a second-story window at 1:30 a.m. and ran to the DeKalbs, barefoot and shaking. She begged them not to tell her moms. The DeKalbs called Child Protective Services.
CPS tried to visit the home twice. On March 23, 2018, they knocked no answer. On March 26, they returned. No response again.
That same day, Jennifer Hart loaded all six children into their SUV. She drove south, crossing into California. At some point, she pulled the car over to a cliffside turnout along Highway 1 in Mendocino County.
Then she hit the gas.
The SUV sped off a 100-foot cliff and slammed into the rocks below. There were no skid marks. No signs of braking. No mechanical failure. Authorities determined it was intentional.
Crash
When first responders reached the wreckage at the base of the cliff, they found the SUV smashed and partially submerged. Jennifer and Sarah Hart were dead. So were three of the children: Markis, Abigail, and Jeremiah. Days later, the bodies of Ciera and Hannah were recovered from the rocky shoreline nearby.
Devonte was never found. His body is presumed to have been carried out to sea.
Toxicology reports revealed that Jennifer had a blood alcohol level of 0.102 well over the legal limit. Sarah had high levels of diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in Benadryl, in her system. All six children had the same drug in their blood at toxic or near-toxic levels. Authorities concluded they were likely sedated before the crash.
What followed was a coroner’s inquest in 2019 the first of its kind in Mendocino County in over 50 years. A jury unanimously ruled the crash was deliberate. The official cause of death: murder-suicide.
More disturbing details emerged: Jennifer had searched “no kill dog shelters,” “how easily can I overdose,” and “is death by drowning relatively painless” in the days before the crash. Sarah had looked up the combination of medications found in the children’s systems. It was not spontaneous it was planned.
The crash raised urgent questions about the gaps in the child welfare system. Despite multiple abuse reports in Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, no state had fully intervened. The Hart family moved across state lines just often enough to reset the clock. No central agency was tracking the pattern.
Legacy
The Hart tragedy was not just a family story. It exposed how easily a carefully curated image could blind neighbors, officials, and the public. Jennifer and Sarah Hart presented themselves as progressive, adoptive moms rescuing six disadvantaged Black children. Their social media was full of pride parades, anti-racist messages, and happy faces.
But behind closed doors was a cycle of starvation, isolation, and control.
The children many of whom were adopted from Texas foster care were failed at every level: by social workers, teachers, law enforcement, and ultimately by a society that confused white saviorism with real safety.
In the end, the viral photo of Devonte hugging a police officer with tears streaming down his face became a tragic symbol. Not of healing, but of pain. His final cries for help, like his siblings’, went unanswered.
The article states they moved to rural Washington, near the California border. But moving from Oregon to Washington would move your further from California? I believe they moved to Woodland, so near he Oregon border, not far from Portland.