A white couple from West Virginia was handed lengthy prison sentences after being found guilty of abusing their adopted children.
The New York Times reports that in January, Donald Lantz was sentenced to 160 years in prison for forced labor, human trafficking, child abuse, and neglect. Jeanne Kay Whitefeather was sentenced to 215 years for the same charges, as well as violating her children’s civil rights.
According to the outlet, the five adopted children who were abused are Black and the couple made them carry out heavy labor like “slaves.” Lantz and Whitefeather were hit with a 16-count indictment.
“You brought these children to West Virginia, a place that I know is ‘almost heaven,’ and you put them in hell,” Eighth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Maryclaire Akers said during their sentencing, per WCHS. “This court will now put you in yours. And may God have mercy on your souls, because this court will not.”
Lantz and Whitefeather adopted the children in 2018. A few months after they moved in May 2023, a neighbor contacted Child Protective Services, claiming that two of the adopted kids, who were 14 and 16 at the time, had been locked in a shed on the couple’s property. Other neighbors alleged that the kids were “forced to perform farm labor and were not permitted inside the residence,” according to court documents.
Deputies paid a visit to the home, later claiming that two of the kids were locked in the shed and only had access to a portable toilet but no water. The kids later told police that they were made to sleep on the floor in the shed, which was locked for 12 hours, wearing dirty clothes.
“It alleges human trafficking, human rights violations, the use of forced labor,” Judge Akers said last year during the indictment. “Human rights violations specific to the fact that these children were targeted because of their race and they were used basically as slaves from what the indictment alleges."
