Page 61 - Marie Claire Australia (January 2020)

CRIME
as witnesses, “because our support
system was so small”, Jen wrote.
But the Harts did find a community
that embraced their rainbow family.
Over the years they became regular
attendees at “transformational festivals”,
days-long socially conscious mashups
of music, yoga and dance. In 2013, the
family relocated to Portland, Oregon,
where Sarah got a job at department
store Kohl’s. They settled in a rented
ranch house in an upscale suburb, raising
goats and chickens in the backyard.
Between shows, the festival
community kept close tabs on each other
on Facebook, where Jen racked up the
likes. “She was a master poster,” a friend
recalls. Her feed showed Abigail and
Devonte eating breakfast with hens
One child welfare
worker warned, “The
problem is these
women look normal”
perched on their heads; Devonte,
Jeremiah and Sierra painting on the
living room floor; all six kids grinning
with a “Kindness Is Contagious” sign.
Each post reaffirmed the same
storyline: here are two mums and their
rehabilitated kids thriving against all
odds. With the Harts, the narrative was,
“You saved them, awesome,” according
to family friend Ian Sperling. “Everyone
was envious. They were the perfect
people with the perfect kids.”
But a different version of the
Harts emerged in police files from the
Minnesota years. In November 2010,
the mums were investigated after
six-year-old Abigail reported “owies” (an
injury) to her teacher. Soon after, the
mothers pulled all six kids out of school;
the Hart Tribe was officially off the grid.
By law, parents who want to
homeschool their children must notify
their district, but the Harts never
registered their kids as homeschooled
in Oregon. However, news of the family
still reached authorities in 2013, when
two whistleblowers called CPS, reporting
that Jen withheld food from the kids as
punishment. “Jen does this thing for her
Facebook page, where the kids pose and
are made to look like one big happy
family,” one informant said, “but after the
photo, they go back to looking lifeless.”
A child welfare worker visited
their home in August 2013 and
interviewed each child. The resulting
report from a caseworker noted that
Jen was “adamant that many of the
family’s issues stemmed from others
not understanding [their] alternative
lifestyle”. Physicals showed that all
but one of the kids had fallen off the
growth chart for their ages. Oregon
CPS also checked in with their
Minnesota counterparts and found out
about the prior incidents at the kids’
school. According to the report, the
Minnesota child welfare worker
warned, “The problem is these women
look normal.” Officials determined that
while “there are some indications of
child abuse or neglect”, there wasn’t
enough data. The state closed the case.
Jen and Sarah continued to use
their family to attract attention. In
December 2014, the family attended a
Black Lives Matter protest in Portland.
There, Devonte, who was in tears –
wearing a fedora hat, a leather jacket,
and carrying a “Free Hugs” sign –
approached a cop in riot gear. The
cop would later tell reporters that he’d
said to the boy, “I’m sorry” and asked
him for a hug. Devonte obliged and
photographers snapped pictures.
The image triggered a nationwide
debate on social media. Was it a
symbolic moment of racial healing
or – as Alex Riedlinger, a Portland
photographer who’d witnessed the
moment, noted on Tumblr – semi-
staged theatre? “Every picture I’ve seen
crops out the circus of photographers
that surrounded these two,” he wrote.
“Devonte was crying before
approaching the officer while he was
talking to his guardian, presumably
because he was terrified. This brings
the question of coercion to my mind.”
After the photo of Devonte went
viral, Jen claimed that she was getting
death threats, though she stayed active
on Facebook. “We’ve come to realise that
some think our lives are next to perfect,”
she wrote to her followers in 2016. “We’re
human, and we struggle through life’s
obstacle course just like everyone else.”
Later that year Jen took a six-month
hiatus from social media. She
re-emerged in the spring of 2017, writing,
“This. Year. Slammed. Us. Hard” and
announced that the family had relocated
to Washington. She said they’d invite
people out “when the time is right”.
fter the middle-of-the-night
interruption from Hannah,
Dana says she spent a lot
of time looking out of her
Afront window at the house
next door. “I was obsessed,” she says.
Everything changed on a Thursday
in March, when Devonte approached
Bruce in the driveway and asked for
tortillas. They didn’t think this was so
out of the ordinary – like a neighbour
asking for a cup of sugar. But then the
15-year-old returned Friday morning,
and again Saturday evening just before
the DeKalbs were going out of town.
Once, he showed up with a wish list:
peanut butter, fruits, bagels, “cured
meats” and “non-perishables”.
Dana asked lots of questions and
after Devonte would leave, she’d type
up notes on her phone. “I wanted to
have enough information so CPS
couldn’t ignore me,” she says. She
noted that the boy’s head seemed
larger than his body, and that he
claimed his parents withheld food,
sometimes for days at a time.
“Everything Hannah told you was
true,” he told Dana. “My mum just told
you those things to make you happy.”
On Friday, March 23, after 10 visits
from Devonte, Dana called CPS. That
afternoon, a CPS worker coming to
visit the Hart house saw Jen’s SUV
pull into the driveway. But when she
rang the bell minutes later, no-one
answered the door. (The Washington
State Department of Social and
Health Services says they attempted to
contact the family on three occasions
FROM LEFT Jen
with Devonte at
a Bernie Sanders
rally; Devonte
hugging musician
Xavier Rudd.