Get informed straight from the source. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word from the Nations Capital to wherever you are because the opinion that matters most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan powered by cable. My name is cary clack, a writer for San Antonio Press news and i cant say enough about this book, we were once a family a story of love, death and child removal in america. It is a difficult book to read. I understand its not the first thing you should say if youre trying to encourage people to buy a book but it is difficult because its painful but its also essential because it challenges how much we care in this state and this country about the children we say we care about when Something Like this can happen. Yvonne day, jeremiah. Hannah. These are the six children who were in an suv march 26th 2018 when their adopted mothers drove the suv off a cliff. Nothing is more shocking than mothers committing suicide but almost as shocking is how these adopted mothers were able to get these children to begin with. Thats the story that roxana writes brilliantly. Roxanna asgarian is a texasbased journalist who writes about courts and the law. She has worked for new yorker among other publications. She received a 2020 2j Anthony Lukas work in progress award for we were once a family. Ladies and gentlemen, roxanna asgarian. [applause] there are so many places i want to go with this book but i also want to make sure we have time for questions and this is an indictment of texas foster care that theres so much in there and i want you to lay out the story of what happened march 26 and what led to that. Can you all hear me good . So when the crash happened, it initially looked like an accident because it was on the Pacific Coast highway and it was a turnout point and places like that are known for these kind ofaccidents. But investigators quickly noticed there were no break marks on the road. The family was living in Washington State at the time so when they reached out to the local officials in washington they learned cps was trying to reach the family that time to initiate an abuse investigation so that point it began to look like it wasnt an accident. I was living in houston at the time goand i got a breaking news assignment from the oregonian which is the newspaper and they asked me to door knock on one of the birth families so theres six kids and there from two sibling groups but theres two separate work mifamilies. Thats how i initially got involved in this story. That family that was the david family started explaining how they lost their children in the first place and it became clear it was a bigger story than was first reported. One of the themes of your book is that throughout the nation but especially in texas it is pleasing to terminate the rights of parents. And it happens more frequently quwith black children. In this case we have a married couple, two white women and these two sets of black siblings and one of the things that you show in your book is that there were family members with both sets of children who were there but they werent allowed to. In the case of the davis family the kids, those kids were raised in houston. And their birth mother sherry traveled with drug abuse and the kids had a father figure who was basically their primary caretaker. He wasnt their biological dad so when dps became involved i think that relationship kind of defused them. He lost custody for not for anything he did but because his wife sherry had a drug problem. They were removed from his care and went into the foster care system and ended up with their aunt, her name was priscilla and she was an upstanding lady and she wanted to adopt the hekids. At that time there were so one did not get adopted by the hearts because he was 10 years old when he was removed and he realized that what was happening that he was being removed from his family and he started acting out and they put him in a Residential Treatment Center which is basically like an institutional setting and he wasnt able to again, he was split from them the aunt basically lost custody because she did not have childcare one day. Her daughter was unavailable so she asked sherry their mom to watch the kids. The caseworker stopped by unannounced and saw their mom there with them and removed them immediately on the spot and never had time to getthem again. Why is that the norm. Sherry had relinquished her rental rights and she did because her attorney said in order for priscilla to adopt the kids she had to be legally free for an option and get adopted when you have legal parents so sherry relinquished her rights with the understanding that the kids would be with their aunt which is still in their family but still in their community. But what happens when you terminate your rights that i think a lot of birthmothers dont understand is when they choose to give up their rights is that the minute your rights are terminated, you no longer have any say in what happens to your kids and you also are in this case she wasnt around allowed to be around whthem so thats why the rumor is what happened is because shewas not allowed to be watching the kids. So the aunt made this mistake and she wanted to, she petitioned to adopt and she was trying to get thekids back. While that was happening they went on the texas Adoption Exchange website so they became sort of advertised as available. And jennifer and sarah were a couple who both grew up in south dakota but were living in minnesota at the time and had already adopted three kids at that point so also from texas as well so they had done the process. And so the kids were moved to minnesota at that point even when the aunt had so she had petitioned to adopt it was denied and she had appealed that decision and before that appeal was decided, they were already legally adopted. That name the texas adoption resource exchange. It sounds like, it doesnt sound like youre dealing with children. In the case of sibling groups they are considered more difficult to get adopted because its more than one kid so a lot of people who want to adopt from the foster care system looking for jobs, and so babies siblings are the three and i think in the case of the heart women that they were taking on sibling groups kind of allowed, i feel that their adoption was fast tracked because texas officials knew that the sibling groups so they had this willing party. And when texas took the kids away they paid monthly stipends for the rest of the kids life but never checked up on what was happening because by the time the kids were adopted they had already been an allegation dispute. Going to the other allegations also with the second set of children. The kids were in a Public School in minnesota ofand the teachers were calling them to report that the kids were reallyhungry. That they didnt seem like n they were getting enough to eat. I would say the kids had food issues which is common to have experienced that repeated disruption. One of the moms of the teacher was playing the food card so for water when the child was saying she was hungry. The teacher started realizing when they called home it seems like the kids were getting in trouble so they stopped going certain but the teachers noticed one of the kids and started the investigation where one of the moms pled guilty to Domestic Abuse. What was the motivation of jenna because one of the things they say they were representing this facade of this very progressive couple presenting this ideal motivation of family and theyre actually using the children as pawns. Something interesting about this case is Jennifer Hart really was active on social media and on facebook. She was a photographer so she would be taking these well lit shots of the kids seeing smiles on their face and writing all about their adoption journey which is a pretty common thing, theres a social network of people and its usually the adoptive momswriting about their journey. But the problem with that was the things she was talking about were hyping an alternate reality where the kids were being fed and they were being harmed but also it was only her voice so we never heard from the kids again except for through this distorted lens that jennifer put out to the world. Chair these siblings were adopted in 2008. 10 years. But with jennifer you talk about school issues, she claimed when they were helping this guy out wit and were vegetarians, after the suicide murderers work fine found in their house, it was a lot of food. There was a lot of food in the house and i say this in the book but i spoke to jennifers siblings and one said that was just or her. It doesnt make it any better. When they searched the house they found out there werent enough beds for the children. There were indicators inside the home that the kids werent being properly cared for. You know, when the washington officials were initiating the investigation that was the third investigation against the family so there had been repeated moments in various places because when the investigation was closed they moved from minnesota to oregon and from oregon to washington and every place they were investigated they found really alarming stuff like the oregon investigation found five or six of the kids were so small werent even on the chart for their ages. Which is really alarming and the doctor said well, we dont know their biological family so they might just be small but the issue with that would be they came from two different biological families so the chances of them being specifically not on the growth chart. And contrast that with whats happening with these families which is not a situation of abuse but was these sort of, there was sort of neglect issues so poverty, trauma, drug use, Mental Illness is what the families were dealing with and they were treated super putatively and the adoptive family was abuse and starvation and those things were basically not ever found to be attributed to the kids. How much do you blame the state of texas. I know but i have to ask. I think texas has an outsized role in what happens because the kids were texans. They were born here and texas was initially responsible for them. They not only removed them from their first family and from their extended family members but they sent them across state lines and never checked on them to the fact that they were paying 400 a month per child for the entirety of the time, that was 12 in 10 years and they never realized that sarah hart had pled guilty to Domestic Abuse of the children. That there have been three cps investigations. So i think that there is, i a lot of the claim although i would say there were multiple agencies and thats more indicative of a systemic issue rather than one specific bad caseworker. Theres a real disparity in statements of dps for both families. Both families were treated very putatively. I think almost all of them are struggling with poverty. So instead of providing some support, meaningful support we give foster parents of a monthly stipend. In texas we give to kids placements to family members. Less than half what we give foster parents but theyre more likely to be living in poverty because everybody else is living in poverty so theres things like that where it essentially sets up a preference for out of family care. We have research over a long period of time that kids can do less and their family home if not with their birth parentsand family members. In particular theres a judge in houston, hes indicative of maybe in an extreme way indicative of this bias in favor of removing children and giving them to families. Hes the one that gave the Davis Children. He is the one that terminated parental rights. Shelton was a unique character but it was indicative. In herron county theres only three judges responsible for all the cdn patients and that texas is the largest county so youre getting a lot of kids. Theres a lot of good reporting from the Houston Press in the 90 and 2000s that talks about a lot of issues and shows support. Charging parents for attorneys which is against the law. He had something he would keep the bench and asked families who were in front of him where they came and looked at it on the map and said that looks like a great place, why dont you go back there sothere was over racism in the court. It was also just everyone who knew him recognized he really wanted the cases to move fast. He wanted the cases off the docket and ultimately what that ends up feeling is parental rights termination sometimes in cases, hes the older brother. He wasnt adopted his parents, his parents rights were terminated so he was made a legal award which is an awful position to in for someone who was 10 when they were removed family. You wanted to get back there. He said want to be adopted because i want home and ultimately when hes extreme he ended up back home with nathaniel because he was staying in a foster home at that time and recognized had walked to his old apartment and nathaniel had the held out hope he would come back and they gave him custody. It begs the question that why was he a fit parent age 16 after six years being traumatized in an instant institution that he wasnt a good parent when he was 10 when he went through that trauma. One of the lines in the book is when he tells his cps caseworker every time i see them you take me away and dante is a survivor but became involved in history more than most journalists that they are reporting on. But in a way that is not heavyhanded. This is a beautifully written book and you found information that lawenforcement and Child Welfare, just talk a bit about personal involvement in this story. Sure. This is six months after the crash and investigators did not know who the second family was in abigails family. It was particularly an issue because they had no other means of who they thought might be at a but they needed like a parents dna to confirm that. So they needed to find these people but they didnt know they were. I found the family name e in some investigative files released by the sheriffs in washington. That was a family name and i looked in a book and found people and when i reached out to them, they were their family so i talked to the grandmother and they did not know their kids have been so that was six months later. I ended up telling them what happened and through that it became clear to me as i was reporting that there were a lot of thefts about the way the media was focusing that was essentially kind of a version of the same thing Jennifer Hart was doing by acting like she saved these kids and putting them through these harrowing abusive situations but none of the reporters were doing thatwork of trying to figure out what happened. So once i had told that family i felt i had entered the story because i had. So at that point i realized i needed to be transparent about my role because tammy is the birth mom of marcus and hannah and abigail and when she found out she called the investigators and submitted her dna because she wanted to do the right thing and they got the results and it was a confirmation that it was hannah, the remains that they found and put out a press release and it was a Big National Story so they put out a public rest release talking to tammy. Dante the older brother. You drive the family to visit him a few months after the murders and talk about that experience. It was in july. He didnt know and dante had held out hope he would be reunited with his siblings when he reached the age they could sell this happened a lot where and when they reach they will try to seek out ap their family so dante had held out hope this would happen. He was frustrated when i first met him. Just like theres a pipeline for kids pathway to incarceration so he was about to get out in october and nathaniel his parents dont want to jeopardize his ability to get out of prison by telling him this news that was going to crush him so they decided to wait until he got out in october. I drove them up there and he had a son that was a few months older than my son so i drove uhim to and slept with him and his family he told them when he was sitting there outhat when he got out he was going tofind his siblings. And he found out when he got out of prison he was incredibly devastated. Whats your recommendation for changing the system . I think at the very least we have to remove a lot fewer kids from their homes. When were talking about 75 percent of cases involving neglect and not abuse, those cases parents are the best course of action we have a punitive attitude towards parents who are poor and struggling. And it ends up being that we are punishing parents and the kids because foster care is a dangerous place forkids. Theres really increased risk of harm so we need to do everything we can possibly do to get kids out of that system and that looks like focusing shless on punishing parents and more on supporting them and honestly financially. It was the first, Families First service, Trump Administration policy in 2018 goes to this. There were a few republicans that were really good. For a long time you u couldnt move funding like federal funding for Preventative Services so that set up an incentive to put kids into foster care for them to get services. Which is obviously not a smart plan because what happens again in this system its very hard to get out of it. Once youre in it youre on a path and in the case of sheltons courtroom theres a timeline, theres a federally mandated timeline you must seek termination of parental rights in foster care for 18 of the last 22 months so when parents are dealing with issues like drug use for instance, we have long wait lists for places where they could get drug treatment. We have this timeline that says, and those things are not compatible. One of the last texas legislative sessions the family says they made it harder. They sought to remove children from their homes for neglect which people that have long known thats an issue because neglect can also neglect poverty and they made it harder to remove kids for those kinds of reasons unless they are in immediate danger which i think is a good first step. Theres a lot of republican members of our legislature that are pretty keyed into this. Its an interesting bedfellows situation because its always the most perfect progressives and area republicans and their agreeing the Child Welfare system is a place that we should be limiting the front door because of all the problems that are so far involved that weve been trying and trying to solve these problems for decades. These problems have basically been foundational to how the system was set up. Do we have any question . One of the pieces i was struck with the Davis Children was the availability of at least one carrying and serve adult or biological parent and i cant for the name nathaniel. You lysaid it beautifully because she had his own story, he had Adult Children and the Davis Children, his role in them, tell us more about that. That was one of those tragedy upon tragedy pieces in the story ask nathaniel passed away last fall. He was a very steady person. He was my contact point in so much of this because he knew his family had been wrong and he never gave up. When i initially met nathaniel ththey had just learned the kids had been murdered. The grief was so immense and it was twofold. The grief of this thing that you could never imagine happening and then the trauma of their removal was so traumatic for that entire family like it cause Health Issues for nothing and his aunt who felt so guilty and so frustrated with how they were treated. The fact that dante returned to nathaniel and nathaniel was waiting for. Dante had a lot of problems from his childhood but nathaniel never gave up on dante. There were ways nathaniel new how damaged nathaniel had become because of what happened to him but he never closed the door. He died with trying to get his main goal of trying to make sure dante would be okay. People sometimes we wonder what about kids who dont have any living family members, is there a better option because the Current System is so traumatic. Having seen anything where there parents passed away and theres no relatives to look to. That is a good question. I think most kids do have people m that love them. Whether or not they are biologically k related that reay know them already. There is an Organization Called found family finders and they take the kids that even in longtermre care that arent up for adoption like dante and they put a lot of effort into researching family members far and wide, not just a cursory like mom passed, dad passed. You are looking at their teachers and people in their life that had a special connection to them and essentially when a kid is removed into foster care do not just remove from their parents but their families and their communities in their schools so we are basically taking kids ability to be resilient awayen from them by isolating them from all these people that care about them. Being removed from your parents, whether or not there was abuse his traumatic and being removed from everybody, kids internal lies that, there is something wrong with them instead of it being like weak are feeling by making them feel like they are alone when theyre not alone. There is a picture which we didnt think of getting it to the photograph which i didnt make the connection of 2014. When you go home you can google davon tate and the Police Officer. The viral photograph after the ferguson in the acquittal of the officer of michael brown. This photo of this 12yearold black boy with a white Police Officer that is the voluntary one of the six children and just talk about that photo in the symbolism speaks a lot to using these children. It speaks to this exact thing. Media has had a role in the story because the way we chose to report it. In 2014 the monterey wood where a free hug sign and that was something jennifer his mom took a lot of pictures of and they were well known in portland for that reason so there is a photo of the monterey crying, there is tears streaming down his face all over on cnn they call it the hub heard around the world and it was a story of racial reconciliation. That is the theme. But for many people who look at the photo it looked troubling because he is not smiling. He is crying and the idea that we took the image and we made it viral to Say Something that im not sure it was ever actually saying. Its indicative of the same stuff jennifer was doing, she said black lives matter and by black children experience racism but she was doing the same thing saying he was shooting guns when he was four years old about davon tate and he only knew customers and things that are racist. But with the idea that she is a good person and she is the person saving the kids. Many of you members are saying it and it has an impact. We did not speak necessarily, of course it involves the adoption system. Also this is emotional for me because i am recently coming to terms with my own adoption and abandonment i was abandoned in the state of texas and when i got the paperwork it was pretty hard to read. Its a really sad thing. I come to discover that im also an interracial adoptee. I asked myself recently, i look white. So how could a system placed me, my biological mother said she ran away to new york and thats where she met my father who was apparently never contacted about me. But how could a system placed me in a white southern racist family for adoption and that is a question im asking myself a lot it is hard. Even my family were mostly dead at this point, my brother also found out from health from us. Theres so much trauma around it. Im wondering if you have any thoughts you would like to respond to about that. I think its a very big part of the story for the adoptee perspective that has been silenced in favor of everything has a happy ending in it usually almost always told from the viewpoint of the adoptive parent. Everything from the law, im glad you got your documents is sound like you got your documents but its really hard for adoptees to get their first record. Theres laws and lots of states whether not title to their own verses to get. We tell ourselves this fiction that were doing this wonderful thing for kids who need to be saved. Its more often and we can see it in our laws giving preference. They can choose whether the birth family can be involved in the life for instance. Adoptees who want to know what their birth certificate has to go through the whole portrait, that is not okay and it shows the system is set up to benefit and weirdly the kids are not the primary group that is being benefited. This story showcases the aspect of it and it showcases the racism that the birth family experiences. I think its clear when you see the different treatment it is hard to draw any other conclusion than active racism. Its not just passive systemic racism. Taking for this important book in the way that you wrote about it. I appreciate reading the book about your connection with the families and how you had a longterm connection with them inin your advocacy for the situations where they were empowered and when you got into the situation to get the remains back for the family. I didnt know how difficult that was in your interaction with the other side of the adopted anparents family who were trying to keep the remains and their things. Im interested in hearing you talk about that. Both birth moms in our first conversation both tme and sherry asked about the remains of the kids and if they could come back home to them. But because they dont have legal rights, the next of kin was actually the parents of jennifer and sarah who had been estranged from them since they got together so they did not w know the children but they were responsible legally for the i remains so i started talking o doug, the data jennifer and he wanted the families to have the remains so i went up there to south dakota and i got the remains of the kids and brought them back to their families which is another thing you were referring to beyond the normal scope of journalism. In that case it felt morally important to do because i had witnessed firsthand the way birth families were sidelined and remained visible in their grief which felt so wrong to me and not of these families were in touch with each other so i was the one link between the people talking to everyone so i figured if i didnt do it it probably would not happen. It was really challenging emotionally and i felt the weight of it as i was working on this book that i had the kids with me for a couple of months. Avantis body was never found. He was the one child that was never recovered and part of that because they practice the ocean in the ocean has ties in all these things happen so davon tate was never found. In neither the other siblings, they had found a part of issues. [inaudible] [applause] if you enjoyed book tv sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a schedule of author discussions, book festivals and more. Book tv every sunday on cspan2 or anytime online at booktv. Org, television for serious readers. This weekend and she two days of book tv beginning with the library of Congress National book festival Live Saturday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern then on sunday at 2 00 p. M. Coverage of the 2023 roosevelt reading festival at the Roosevelt Library in hyde park new york. At 9 00 p. M. 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