Couple Gets Maximum Sentences for Abusing Adopted Kids

A West Virginia couple received the maximum sentences of decades in prison Wednesday for abusing their adopted children. The abuse of the five children included heavy labor, locking them in bedrooms, forcing some to sleep on concrete floors, and making them stand for hours with their hands on their heads, the AP reports.

• Jeanne Kay Whitefeather received up to 215 years in prison and her husband, Donald Lantz, got a term of up to 160 years. A Kanawha County jury on Jan. 29 found the pair guilty on multiple counts of forced labor, human trafficking, and child abuse and neglect. Whitefeather also was convicted of civil rights violations based on race. Whitefeather will be eligible for parole after serving 40 years and Lantz after 30.
• The judge waived $2.4 million in potential fines so the couple could pay each of the children $280,000 in restitution, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.

• "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," Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers told the defendants. "And may God have mercy on your souls. Because this court will not."
• One by one, letters written by four of the children were read in court by the prosecutor office's victim advocate. Some of the children stood by the advocate's side as she read. The letters said the children endured unspeakable trauma, have difficulty trusting anyone, suffer nightmares, and that they question and fear affection. The oldest girl, now 18, addressed the court directly, telling Whitefeather: "I'll never understand how you can sleep at night. I want you to know that you are a monster."

• The couple, who are white, adopted the five Black siblings while living in Minnesota, moved to a farm in Washington state in 2018, then brought the family to West Virginia in May 2023, when the children ranged in age from 5 to 16. Five months after their arrival in Sissonville, the couple was arrested after neighbors saw Lantz lock the oldest girl and her teenage brother in a shed and leave the property. A deputy used a crowbar to get them out.
• After Whitefeather and Lantz made brief statements in court, Akers said they refused to take responsibility for their actions. The judge pointed to a presentencing report in which the couple blamed their real estate agent "for not finding a place isolated enough," Akers said. "But I guess you should have explained to your Realtor that you needed an isolated place away from people so that you could continue to abuse your children."

(More West Virginia stories.)