A white couple has been sentenced in West Virginia to serve over a hundred years in prison each after they were found to have treated their five adopted black children as slaves on their farms.
Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, 63, was sentenced Wednesday to 215 years in prison and her 64-year-old husband Donald Lantz received a sentence of 160 years. The couple faced numerous charges, including but not limited to human trafficking, child neglect, and forced labor.
Whitefeather and Lantz were also ordered to pay $280,000 in restitution to the victims.
“You brought these kids to West Virginia, a place as I know as almost heaven and put them in hell,” Circuit Court Judge MaryClaire Akers said after the sentencing, according to NBC affiliate WSAZ. “The court will now put you in yours. May God have mercy on your souls, because this court will not.”
The children were adopted from a shelter in Minnesota but later moved to Washington State in 2018 and Virginia in 2023.
The conditions the children were subjected to do
The children’s treatment was discovered after police conducted a welfare check following reports from a neighbor that they had witnessed a teenage girl and young boy being locked in a shed.
The sheriff’s department said that the children were discovered in unhygienic conditions, with no running water or bathroom and had been deprived of food. They had been forced to sleep on cold concrete and had been in the shed for 12 hours at the time of the sheriff’s discovery.
A 14-year-old was later discovered with dirty clothes and no shoes with sores on his feet.
The children were only fed peanut butter sandwiches, according to the New York Times.
The couple, according to the indictment, targeted the children because of their race and made them carry out forced unpaid labor.
Despite the abuse, Whitefeather told the children in court that she did love them, according to WSAZ.
“I just want the court to know that I have made mistakes I am very sorry for that and I love my children and I have never, ever, done anything to my ... children to harm them intentionally,” she said. “Children, I do love you.”
During the trial, the defense argued the couple were overwhelmed with the children’s mental health issues, and tried to seek support, as well as the trauma associated with the abuse from the children’s biological home, The Associated Press reported.
John J. Balenovich, Lantz’s lawyer, said in an interview on Wednesday that his client “maintains his innocence as to the charges” and is considering an appeal, the New York Times reported.
Whitefeather’s lawyer Mark Parts acknowledged that the couple made poor parenting choices but asserted that the children were not kept as slaves.
“These are farm people that do farm chores,” Plants said, according to the Associated Press. “It wasn’t about race. It wasn’t about forced labor.”
Prosecutors reportedly said that the children had been forced to carry out manual labour including pulling grass by hand and carrying buckets up and down a hill.
The teenage victim described the adopted parents as “monsters” in an impact statement.
A second child told the courts that despite the abuse, “I will be something amazing. I will be strong and beautiful. You will always be exactly what you are: horrible.”