CA CA - Hannah, 16, Devonte, 15, & Sierra Hart, 12, Mendocino County, 26 March 2018 #1

[Rodnester]

From the pictures of the SUV on the Rocks, it appears that they must have rolled down the side of the cliff. If the went straight off of the turnout the SUV would have flipped and the front of the SUV would be facing back towards the turnout. IMO, they may have pulled over to see the view and when trying to merge back onto the road, the driver may have swerved to avoid hitting another car and over corrected. This sent them over the side and the SUV ended up upside down in the water.

 

[Stunned]

Considering another child in this family said going without food was used as punishment I don't see why people are saying they weren't telling the truth.It's sadly obvious abuse was going on in this family.

And that is why we need to listen to a child saying they are hungry. I think it takes a lot of hunger for a child to approach a neighbor or anyone really.
I send my “kids” home with plenty of snacks, fruits...etc. everyday.
Many children come in hungry, I make sure they leave full

 

[K_Z]

A few new details from the CNN article of the last hour. BBM.

"One of the girls came to the door at 1:30 in the morning and said that she needed help and the parents were not treating her properly, and (she) wanted us to protect her," DeKalb said. "We ended up getting her back to her parents ... and then I went over there the next morning and just checked on things, and everything seemed normal, and we let it go from there."

DeKalb said he and his wife also encountered Devonte, the one child he saw doing outside chores, such as taking the garbage bins to and from the street.

"About a week ago, he (Devonte) started coming over asking for food and saying that they were taking meals away from him due to punishment," DeKalb told HLN. "And it started out as one time a day and escalated up to three times a day, until a week went by and we decided that we needed to get professional help."

Last Friday, DeKalb said, he called Child Protective Services. They arrived at the house just after Jennifer Hart came home from work, he said, and she didn't answer the door. Sarah Hart came home not long afterward, he said, and by Saturday morning the family and their vehicle were gone.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/us/family-killed-in-pacific-coast-crash/index.html

 

[Stunned]

Just putting this out there... the evidence seems stacked against the Harts, however I foster "hard to place kids". I am currently on a break, because it is HARD, heart breaking & unbelievably stressful. But many MANY children with trauma backgrounds have food issues. Our 15 y.o. foster, despite having LOTS of food available anytime he wanted, would binge, steal & hoard. He would pretend to leave for school, then wait til we left for work, then break back into the house to eat leftover bday cake, holiday treats, lunch snacks... all while healthy sandwiches, snacks etc were moulding away in his backpack, locker, under his bed, in his dresser. He had been gone for almost a year & we moved houses... I found half eaten crap hidden in the most bizarre of locations, treat wrappers stuffed in couch cushions, behind picture frames. Trauma manifests in awful ways for kids.

Yes....trauma. I am now the 1 on 1 shadow for a fostered 3 year old opiate child. He cannot get enough food, he will hide it in his shoes. He was traumatized before he was rescued....but boy, oh boy.......meal times with my guy is flashback city for him. Plates fly!

 

[Charliegizmo49]

Unless autopsies show medical episode that extended bed pickup (2003 Silver Sierra extended cab pickup) launched over the side.

There are no tracks over the side that would suggest it rolled. It was deliberately driven over. When a person drives a coastal area you sure as heck know the ocean is beside you.

I would think no one would drive faster than the distance than they could see. Taking into consideration, as sad as it may be, IMO THE DRIVER hit the gas and knew perfectly well the outcome.

I spent 35 years on Alaska roads many with no guardrail and even in the dark in the mountains NEVER drove ahead of my headlights. Especially when I was new to the area.

And 6 kids in the back of an extended cab perhaps with 2 dogs and what ever close they were traveling with in the back? I hope their families can cope with this.

 

[georgiajean]

Article about the family, from 2015.
The family went into seclusion after the 2014 photo went viral, because they received death threats and reporters were camped out on their front yard.

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/05/hug_photo.html

 

[LietKynes]

More back story and details from an article updated this evening. None of this information about the couple and their kids is encouraging, IMO.


http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-n...f/2018/03/police_head_back_to_california.html

BBM

RSBM

Of interest is the fact that both women were estranged from their immediate families .
Wonder if their relatives had become suspicious of the starvation/abuse ?

Somewhat like the established fact that JH didn't allow Lucas' relatives access to them after said relatives noticed clear indications of abuse. He knew what was happening . So sad !

These Hart women put on a false front of a happy family -- while mistreating their adopted children. There is no excuse.
:moo:

 

[georgiajean]

Drone footage of crash site. https://youtu.be/XVXbGnOP69M

 

[georgiajean]

From this article, I think the reason Sara took the blame for the abuse (rather than Jen, who the child said hit her) is because the other parent, Jen, was the stay-at-home parent. Better to leave the stay at home parent with the children if jail time was on the horizon???

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-n...f/2018/03/devonte_harts_little_sister_to.html

"Authorities later interviewed Sarah Hart, who told them Abigail had been "lying out of control" lately and that she and Jennifer had recently resorted to spanking their children.

Sarah Hart then said it was she — and not her partner Jennifer — who had struck the child. Sarah Hart said she had bent her daughter over the bathtub and "swatted" her repeatedly, which likely led to the bruising.
"Sarah again stated she had lost her temper, mostly due to lying, and that she had lost her control," the police report says.
Sarah told police she worked while Jennifer stayed at home."

 

[K_Z]

Does anyone know what kind of job/ career Sarah had?

*They must have been doing well financially, to purchase the Woodland home on 2 acres in May 2017.

 

[georgiajean]

Unless autopsies show medical episode that extended bed pickup (2003 Silver Sierra extended cab pickup) launched over the side.

There are no tracks over the side that would suggest it rolled. It was deliberately driven over. When a person drives a coastal area you sure as heck know the ocean is beside you.

I would think no one would drive faster than the distance than they could see. Taking into consideration, as sad as it may be, IMO THE DRIVER hit the gas and knew perfectly well the outcome.

I spent 35 years on Alaska roads many with no guardrail and even in the dark in the mountains NEVER drove ahead of my headlights. Especially when I was new to the area.

And 6 kids in the back of an extended cab perhaps with 2 dogs and what ever close they were traveling with in the back? I hope their families can cope with this.

It was an SUV. 2003 GMC Yukon

 

[travelbug]

At least 2 of the 3 missing children were involved with asking the neighbors for help. We know Devonte was asking for food and one of many news articles I have seen reported that one of the girls asking for protection was 12. That would be Sierra. I also read that one of the children tried to run away. That has me wondering whether those 3 were "punished", for causing the CPS visit, earlier in the road trip. The best case scenario (yet still very grim) is that they were dropped off somewhere desolate during the drive or they managed to run away. If something of that sort happened it wouldn't take long for the adults to realize their "fantasy family" story was about to implode. How could they return home without 3 of the children and where could they move and not be recognized?! Sadly, I think there is a very small possibility this was an accident. As heartbreaking as this is, I really fear for the 3 missing children. It just seems too coincidental that 2 of them were known to be the cause of the visit from CPS. :notgood: :crying:

 

[K_Z]

Does anyone know what kind of job/ career Sarah had?

*They must have been doing well financially, to purchase the Woodland home on 2 acres in May 2017.

Quoting my own post because I found this from when the couple lived in Alexandria, MN:

Mike Fealy lived across the street from the Harts, and said the family moved into the Irving Street home in about 2007 and lived there for five or six years.

He said Sarah Hart worked at the Herberger’s department store in town, while Jennifer Hart “stayed home with the kids and home-schooled them.”

** This seems to indicate that they pulled the kids out of public school and began homeschooling BEFORE they moved to Oregon. Likely after the abuse episode that Sarah pled guilty to.

Also this:

Police interviewed the other children and learned that both parents spanked all but one of the boys and that Jennifer Hart was the more frequent disciplinarian.

The report revealed that the girl told authorities she was hit with a fist as punishment for having “a penny in her pocket” that she found at school. The child said her head went under cold water at one point, and she “bonked her head on the tub,” the report added.

http://www.startribune.com/minnesot...mily-that-plunged-from-calif-cliff/478282073/

BBM

And more detail yet about the incidence where one of the girls went to the DeKalb residence at 1:30 am:

She “was at our door in a blanket saying we needed to protect her,” Bruce DeKalb said. “She said that they were abusing her.” The entire family came over to their house the next morning to apologize and explain it was a bad week, Dana DeKalb said.

https://www.twincities.com/2018/03/29/family-killed-in-cliff-plunge-free-spirits-or-troubled/

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Was it murder/ suicide? Or a tragic accident?

Looks like a female family annihilator to me. They used to be rare, it being more of a male thing when their world started to fall apart, but the female variety does seem to be becoming more common. There was a similar case in the PNW last year (?) when a mother drove her kids off a cliff beside a road bridge over a river valley.

 

[KaaBoom]

From the pictures of the SUV on the Rocks, it appears that they must have rolled down the side of the cliff. If the went straight off of the turnout the SUV would have flipped and the front of the SUV would be facing back towards the turnout. IMO, they may have pulled over to see the view and when trying to merge back onto the road, the driver may have swerved to avoid hitting another car and over corrected. This sent them over the side and the SUV ended up upside down in the water.

They were not merging onto the road. They were not near the road. They drove straight off the cliff.

 

[K_Z]

If you watch the drone footage looking back at the cliff, you can clearly see the tire tracks continue over the edge and downward.

[video=youtube;sF1pygUSdOc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF1pygUSdOc[/video]

 

[leyash]

strange. i have a mutual friend with jen. goodness.

 

[KaaBoom]

If you watch the drone footage looking back at the cliff, you can clearly see the tire tracks continue over the edge and downward.

[video=youtube;sF1pygUSdOc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF1pygUSdOc[/video]

That is correct, except I believe the tire marks are from when the car was pulled back up onto the cliff. The reports are there was no tire marks indicating where it went off. Theoretically the car could have gone off at any angle, but they would have definitely been heading for the edge of the cliff.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Layer over all that adopted kids with previous deep trauma and ongoing special needs, and the women's intense passion for political and social justice causes (with a lot of long distance travel), and this looks very much like the kind of religious child abuse cases we read about-- just with a progressive/ liberal non-traditional family, instead of a conservative, fundamentalist religious family. The abuse pattern is identical, IMO.

I'd suggest that Leftist environmentalism is as much capable of becoming a cult as conservative fundamentalism is. They are both political belief systems - religious systems as well if you accept the idea of secular religion. There are elements within the US environmental movement that would meet the definition of terrorist organisations almost anywhere outside the US, eg there was one called Trees First some years ago whose members were strongly implicated in a number of arson and criminal damage incidents.

Another thing: I've not waded through all the linked media so far, but do we know that all the children were adopted through official channels? I'm aware that in some parts of the US children within the fostering and adoption system can be unofficially passed from one family to another like bags of old clothes and nobody keeps track of them. At least one missing person thread here on WS relates to a child who disappeared from such a family.

 

[georgiajean]

I'd suggest that Leftist environmentalism is as much capable of becoming a cult as conservative fundamentalism is. They are both political believe systems - religious systems as well if you accept the idea of secular religion. There are elements within the US environmental movement that would meet the definition of terrorist organisations almost anywhere outside the US, eg there was one called Trees First some years ago whose members were strongly implicated in a number of arson and criminal damage incidents.

Another thing: I've not waded through all the linked media so far, but do we know that all the children were adopted through official channels? I'm aware that in some parts of the US children within the fostering and adoption system can be unofficially passed from one family to another like bags of old clothes and nobody keeps track of them. At least one missing person thread here on WS relates to a child who disappeared from such a family.

The Harts adopted two sets of siblings. Both sets were from southeast Texas.
http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2018/03/for_devonte_and_his_siblings_p.html

"Jennifer and Sarah Hart adopted the children from southeast Texas in 2006 and 2009, said Tiffani Butler, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.'