A West Virginia couple convicted of abusing their adopted children by locking them in a shed, forcing them to sleep on the floor and use buckets as toilets has been sentenced to decades in prison.
On Wednesday, a judge in Kanawha County Circuit Court ordered that Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, 62, and her husband Donald Lantz, 63, serve their maximum sentences consecutively.
Whitefeather, who was sentenced to 215 years in prison, must serve at least 40 years before being eligible for parole, whereas Lantz, who was sentenced to 160 years, must serve at least 30. They will each be required to pay $280,000 in restitution to the children.
The white couple, who adopted the five Black siblings, ages 5 to 16, moved to West Virginia in 2023 and were arrested after two of the children were discovered locked in an unsanitary shed.
“You brought them to West Virginia, a place I know as almost heaven, and you put them in hell,” Judge Maryclaire Akers told the couple before imposing the sentence. “This court will now place you in yours. May God have mercy on your souls, as this court will not.”
The pair was sentenced nearly two months after a jury found them guilty of multiple counts of forced labor, human trafficking, and child abuse and neglect on January 29. Whitefeather was also found guilty of civil rights violations based on race.
In court on Wednesday, the couple’s oldest daughter read a letter she had written to her parents.
“I don’t understand at all how you were able to treat any person the way you treated me and my siblings and then preach the name of God right after that,” she told me.
“Observing my siblings’ experiences impacted my mental health significantly…” I felt hopeless in those circumstances. “I was very angry.”
Before imposing the sentence, the judge denied the couple’s motion for a new trial.
When given the opportunity to address the court, Whitefeather apologized.
“I have made mistakes, and I’m very sorry for that,” she commented. “I love my children and I have never done anything .. to harm them intentionally.”
Lantz also spoke, addressing the children who were present in the courtroom.
“I would just like to say, children, I do love you.”
Victim advocate Brittany Leavitt read letters from several other children, all of whom are siblings.
“I was taught to laugh at my siblings and told they were bad,” the youngest daughter wrote in her letter, which was read in court. “Now that I’m in my new home, I realize that not everything was in order…They were mean, and children should not be bullied by their parents. “They deserve to be loved.”
In her letter, the middle daughter wrote: “Hello, I am a little girl… and I am working on changing my life. I am going to be something amazing. I’ll be strong and beautiful. You will always be what you are: horrible.”
The couple adopted the children while living in Minnesota, then relocated to a farm in Washington state in 2018, and finally brought the family to West Virginia in May 2023.
Five months after arriving in Sissonville, they were arrested after neighbors witnessed Lantz locking the oldest girl and her teenage brother in a shed and leaving the property. A deputy used a crowbar to force them out.
According to a criminal complaint, a 9-year-old girl was discovered crying in a loft alone with no fall protection. According to deputies, the children were found in filthy clothes and smelling of body odor, with the oldest boy discovered barefoot with what appeared to be sore feet.
When Lantz eventually returned, he was accompanied by a fourth child, who deputies later identified as a 5-year-old girl. Following the couple’s arrest, Child Protective Services took custody of all five of their children.
Last month, the couple’s oldest daughter, now an adult, filed a lawsuit against them, alleging severe physical and emotional abuse and neglect that has permanently scarred her.
During the trial, neighbors testified that they never saw the children play and that Lantz forced them to stand in line or perform difficult chores around the yard, such as lifting heavy objects. After Lantz noticed the curious neighbors, the children mostly remained indoors.
The eldest daughter testified that the majority of the outdoor work took place in Washington, and that some of them were forced to dig with their hands. She also claimed that the children were cursed “all the time” and that Whitefeather used racist language.
The daughter claimed that Whitefeather gave preferential treatment to the youngest child, who was not involved in any of the charges, and that she told the other children that she wished for a life without them.
The daughter also stated that the children were fed a consistent diet of peanut butter sandwiches at set times, with some leftover from a previous meal. Some children were forced to stand in their rooms for hours with their hands over their heads.
According to testimony, the oldest girl and boy shared a room, were forced to sleep on the floor, and used the same bucket for the bathroom while the other held up a sheet to block the home’s security cameras.
The couple and their attorneys disputed the allegations, with Lantz testifying that the chores were assigned to teach the children responsibility.
The defense claimed that the couple was simply overwhelmed by trying to get help for the children’s mental health issues, abuse, and trauma from their biological home. Lantz’s attorney, John Balenovich, stated that the state’s child welfare agency, which the family had requested assistance from several times, “dropped the ball the most in this case.”
A forensic psychologist for the prosecution testified that the couple’s treatment of the children exacerbated their conditions.
Assistant Prosecutor Madison Tuck stated that despite the fact that a behavioral health clinic was just minutes away from their home, the couple never sought help for the oldest boy.
Attorneys cited the boy’s physical altercation with Whitefeather in 2022 as the beginning of the family’s internal struggles. He is now receiving full-time care in a psychiatric facility.
Mark Plants, Whitefeather’s attorney, stated during the closing argument that the couple was only guilty of making poor parenting decisions.
“These are farm people doing farm chores,” Plants explained. “It was not about race. “It was not about forced labor.”
