A white couple from West Virginia were collectively sentenced to 375 years in prison for forcing their five adopted black children to work on their farm as “slaves” while being berated with racial slurs.
Jeanne Kay Whitefeather received up to 215 years in prison and her husband, Donald Lantz, will serve up to 160 years — the maximum sentence — after the pair were convicted of forced labor, human trafficking and child abuse and neglect in January.
“You brought these children to West Virginia, a place that I know as ‘Almost Heaven,’ and you put them in hell. This court will now put you in yours,” Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers barked at the defendants on Wednesday.
“And may God have mercy on your souls. Because this court will not.”
The four oldest children penned emotional letters to their adoptive parents, which were read aloud in the courtroom. The children said in the letters that they have endured life-changing trauma that’s left them scarred with trust issues and nightmares.
“I’ll never understand how you can sleep at night. I want you to know that you are a monster,” the eldest daughter, now 18, told the court.
Last month, the 18-year-old sued the couple, alleging severe physical and emotional abuse and neglect that has scarred her permanently.
The couple adopted the five black siblings in Minnesota, then moved to a farm in Washington state in 2018 before picking up and moving to Sissonville, West Virginia, in May 2023, when the children were between 5 and 16 years old.
Whitefeather and Lantz were arrested months later in October 2023 after a child welfare call led to the discovery of two teenagers — the eldest daughter and her teenage brother — locked in a shed at the couple’s home.
When police pried open the barn door with a crowbar, they found a porta potty but no lights or running water. One of the teens told police they had been locked in the barn and not fed for 12 hours.
The siblings said the couple forced them to sleep on the concrete floor without any mattresses. They both wore dirty clothes and had body odor, police noted, according to the filing.
Inside the main residence, a 9-year-old girl was found crying in a loft alone. Three hours later, Lantz arrived with an 11-year-old boy. Whitefeather soon followed with a 5-year-old girl.
All five were turned over to Child Protective Services after the couple’s arrests.
Akers said last year after they were indicted “these children were targeted because of their race, and they were used basically as slaves.”
During the trial, neighbors testified that they never saw the children playing but did witness them standing in line or performing hard labor. Once Lantz noticed his curious neighbors, he kept the children mostly inside, prosecutors said.
The eldest daughter testified that most of the outdoor work took place at the family’s Washington residence, where some of them were forced to use their hands to dig.
She also said the children were verbally abused “all the time” and that Whitefeather used racist language.
They were fed mostly peanut butter sandwiches at scheduled times, and some children were forced to stand in their rooms for hours with their hands on their heads.
The two oldest children were forced to sleep on the floor in their shared room and used the same bucket for the bathroom while the other held up a sheet for privacy from the home’s security cameras, according to testimony.
The couple’s defense attorneys argued that they were overwhelmed after taking in the children, who were already suffering from the abuse of their biological parents.
Whitefeather’s attorney, Mark Plants, said during closing arguments that the couple’s only crime was bad parenting.
“These are farm people that do farm chores,” Plants said. “It wasn’t about race. It wasn’t about forced labor.”
With Post wires
