OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:03 PM – Friday, March 21, 2025
A couple in West Virginia was given a total term of 375 years in prison for making their five adopted Black children work as “slaves” on their farm — while being “verbally abused” with derogatory remarks about their race.
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Following their January convictions for “forced labor, human trafficking, child abuse and neglect,” Jeanne Kay Whitefeather was given a maximum sentence of 215 years in prison, while her husband, Donald Lantz, was given a term of 160 years.
“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,” stated Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers, who spoke to the defendants on Wednesday.
“And may God have mercy on your souls. Because this court will not.”
The court read aloud a number of letters that four of the children wrote to their adoptive parents. According to the children’s letters, in the couple’s care, they experienced life-altering trauma that has left them damaged, plagued by nightmares and trust issues.
“I’ll never understand how you can sleep at night. I want you to know that you are a monster,” the oldest daughter, who is now 18, told the court.
Alleging severe physical and mental abuse and neglect that left her permanently disfigured, the 18-year-old filed a lawsuit against the couple last month.
After adopting the five Black siblings in Minnesota, the couple relocated their new “family” to a farm in Washington state in 2018. In May 2023, when the children were between the ages of five and sixteen, they picked up and moved to Sissonville, West Virginia.
Months later, in October 2023, Whitefeather and Lantz were taken into custody after a child welfare call revealed that the couple’s oldest daughter and her teenage brother were locked in a shed at their house.
When police finally arrived, they reportedly discovered a porta potty, but no running water or lights when they used a crowbar to pry open the barn door. One of the teenagers told police that they had gone 12 hours without food — while still confined to the barn.
According to the siblings, their adoptive parents made them sleep without beds on the concrete floor. Officers noted in their report that both of the minors had extremely pungent body odor and were dressed in filthy clothing.
“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,” The New York Post reported.
Judge Akers argued that “these children were targeted because of their race, and they were used basically as slaves” following the couple’s indictment last year.
Additionally, neighbors of the couple testified throughout the trial that although they never saw the children playing, they did see them standing in line or doing labor-intensive tasks. Prosecutors maintained that Lantz kept the kids largely indoors when he became aware of his nosy, inquisitive neighbors.
The oldest daughter also said that the majority of the outside labor was done at the family’s home in Washington — where some of the children were told to dig with their hands. She noted that Whitefeather would say inappropriate racial slurs around the other children, and that they were verbally abused “all the time” in general — especially if they did not finish their workload.
Some of the children were reportedly forced to “stand in their rooms” for hours with their hands on their heads, and they were mostly fed peanut butter sandwiches at set times.
According to court testimony, the two oldest children were forced to sleep on the floor of their shared room and they had to use “the same bucket” to go to the bathroom, while the other held up a sheet to hide themselves from the couple’s security cameras.
Defense lawyers for the couple tried to argue that after adopting the children, who were already previously abused by their original birth parents — the couple was overwhelmed. During closing arguments, Whitefeather’s lawyer, Mark Plants, claimed that the couple’s primary transgression was just poor parenting.
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