I learned of the tragic death of six children when I heard a podcaster talking about the book We Were Once a Family. I bought the book immediately. This is the story of the tragedy at the hands of married couple Sarah and Jennifer Hart. The two adopted six Black children (two sibling sets of 3) from Texas moving them to Minnesota and beyond. 

Roxanna Asgarian is a journalist writing about the child welfare and foster systems. She tells the story of the tragedy, but with more focus on the birth families. She contrasts the support and lack of oversight given to the adopted parents with the judgment, harsh oversight, and lack of support given to the families of origin. Beyond the stories of the families, the book delves into the broken systems that allowed these children to be abused and then murdered by the Hart women. 

I found this book to be well written and fascinating. Asgarian adeptly weaves together relevant and historical facts with the personal details of the kids and their parents. Whenever the realities were too heavy she switched gears and allowed me to “know” a fact, then when the facts were too much, she allowed me to emote and connect with an endearing anecdote. This is a great book about a horrible system. The call is for us to care for one another as only people, neighbors, and communities can. All systems fail so overhauling isn’t the answer. Will we be a community? Will we listen and love all our children? 

In Asgarian’s words:

We tell these children, they must renounce their families in order to have a chance at a “better life“. But children, both young and older exist in the context of their own families, their own histories. 

“We remove kids for neglect and place them in strangers’ homes, and give the stranger a monthly stipend to take care of the child,”Dettlaff says. “What if we just gave that $1000 a month to the mother who needed it?”