Indictment alleges West Virginia couple used adopted Black children as ‘slaves,’ judge says
A couple arrested after several of their adopted children were found locked in a barn near their West Virginia home are set to go on trial later this year on charges a judge said involved using their children as “slaves.”
Donald Ray Lantz and Jeanne Kay Whitefeather are scheduled to go to trial later this year after being indicted on 16 counts, each accusing them of civil rights violations, human trafficking, forced labor, gross child neglect and falsifying an application for a public defender. All but one of the charges are felonies.
Lantz and Whitefeather are white. Four children whose initials appear in the indictment are black.
The indictment said Lantz and Whitefeather coerced, threatened and interfered with “the free exercise and enjoyment of every right and privilege” of the four children.
Kanawha County Assistant Prosecutor Madison Tuck said Wednesday that while she could not answer questions about specific details, “I would just say that because the charge involves a civil rights violation, there is certainly a racial element to the case.”
The couple’s trial is scheduled for Sept. 9. They remain in custody at the South Central Regional Jail.
Circuit Judge MaryClaire Akers was shocked after a grand jury indicted the couple in May, saying during an arraignment on June 11, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an indictment like that in all my time,” according to WCHS-TV. .
Akers said the indictment alleged the children were “essentially used as slaves.”
Authorities began investigating after receiving a call last October to the home in Sissonville, near Charleston, from someone expressing concern for the children’s well-being. Sheriff’s deputies entered a shed next to the house, where a teenage boy and a girl were locked up. The children had not received adequate food and sanitary care, and the room had no running water or sanitation, according to a criminal complaint.
In the main house, a 9-year-old girl was found crying alone in an attic approximately 4.6 meters high, with no fall protection. No adults were present in the home. A fourth child was with Lantz when he finally returned. Officers were later led to the couple’s 6-year-old adopted black daughter, who had been with acquaintances from the couple’s church.
The couple were arrested and the children were placed in the care of Child Protective Services.
Akers ruled that the bonds for each of the defendants were insufficient and ordered them increased from $200,000 to $500,000 cash-only.
Lantz’s attorney, Ed Bullman, said at the June 11 hearing that the indictment was full of “square pegs and very round holes.”
Whitefeather’s brother, Mark Hughes of Chesapeake, Ohio, testified at a bond hearing in October that the Sissonville home was unfurnished because the family was in the process of moving to a larger home in Beckley, according to WCHS-TV. During the hearing, Whitefeather’s attorney, Mark Plants, called the shed a “teen clubhouse,” said there was a key in the shed and that there was “just a simple misunderstanding of what’s going on here.”
But in a criminal complaint, Deputy HK Burdette said he knocked on the shed door on Oct. 2 and the teenage girl inside reported she couldn’t open the door. After officers entered, the girl said the suspects brought her and her brother food early that morning and that they had been inside for about 12 hours with no contact from the couple. The girl also said she and her brother were not allowed into the house and were “locked in the shed for long periods of time every day.”
The children were wearing dirty clothes and smelled of body odor, and the boy was barefoot and had what appeared to be sores on his feet, Burdette said.
In a court filing, Assistant Kanawha County Prosecutor Chris Krivonyak said the couple sold an 80-acre ranch for $725,000 in Tonasket, Washington. Whitefeather’s brother posted two $200,000 bonds to secure the defendants’ first jail sentence three days later. In March, the couple sold the Sissonville home for $295,000, Krivonyak said.
In addition, a U.S. magistrate judge ruled in February that child protective services had failed to adequately investigate what happened to the children, who “suffered for months at the hands of their adoptive parents.” The judge has ordered Child Protective Services to provide information in the case as part of an investigation ongoing class action lawsuit He accuses the state of failing to protect children and overhaul its overwhelmed foster care system.
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Associated Press writer Leah Willingham contributed to this report.