A West Virginia couple accused of locking their adopted Black children in a barn and using them for forced labor pleaded not guilty this week to a slew of new abuse charges compounding the horrors allegedly inflicted on their defenseless kids.
Jeanne Whitefeather, 62, is accused of spraying and exposing four of her adopted children to bear spray and repellant. She is now facing four counts of child abuse resulting in bodily injury. Donald Lantz, 63, was charged with one count of child abuse for striking one of the children.
The couple are already charged with human trafficking of a minor child; civil rights violations based on color, race, and/or ancestry; use of a minor child in forced labor; and child neglect, creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death.
They were arrested in October 2023 after two of their adoptive children — a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, both Black — were found in a padlocked barn with no electricity, no running water, and no way out. A third child, a 9-year-old girl, also Black, was found in a confined loft in the home, away from the presence of the adults and isolated from her other siblings, according to reports.
The couple had adopted five children in all.
Whitefeather and Lantz have been locked up since June, when a judge revoked their initial bond and raised it to $500,000 apiece — more than double the amount they faced in October 2023. They had made bail in February and were released to stand trial.
A grand jury indicted the couple on more than a dozen new charges in last month, and on Dec. 2 the two pleaded not guilty to the superseding indictment’s charges.
Details of the children’s living conditions at the property in Sissonville, West Virginia, are chilling. Police said the children locked in the barn were given a small toilet seat torn from an RV to use when they had to go to the bathroom.
Testifying at their second bond hearing, Whitefeather explained that the barn was a “teenage clubhouse” and insisted the children were not actually locked inside.
Neighbors, according to the indictment, reported otherwise. “The children were forced to perform farm labor and were not permitted inside the residence,” they said.
Upon their rescue, the 16-year-old girl told deputies that they had been locked in the barn for approximately 12 hours. Police had to force themselves into the shed, where a deputy noticed a horrible smell and stifling heat due to the lack of circulating air.
The teens were feral and dirty, reeking of body odor, court documents revealed. The boy had “open sores on his bare feet.”
The siblings told police they were forced to sleep on a bare concrete floor with no mattress or covers.
Police waited at the house for three hours until Lantz arrived home with an 11-year-old boy. Authorities checked the home and found the 9-year-old holed up in the loft.
About an hour later, Whitefeather returned home and took deputies to another 6-year-old girl visiting with another couple from their church. The couple was then arrested.
Prosecutors said they paid their initial bond — $400,000 in total — through profits from their child trafficking. Lantz and Whitefeather had claimed they possessed no income or assets.
It was later discovered that the couple sold an 80-acre ranch in Tonasket, Washington, for $725,000. A few days later, Whitefeather’s brother, Marcus Hughes, posted two bonds for $200,000 to release the couple from the South Central Regional Jail.
Once released, they sold the home where the alleged abuse occurred for $295,000.
Those funds, seen as potential profits from human trafficking, are now inaccessible to the defendants. Even if the money came from legitimate sources, it was intended to fund further human trafficking and forced labor, prosecutors argued.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers said the case was unlike any she had seen before.
“It alleges human trafficking, human rights violations, the use of forced labor,” Akers said, according to reports. “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.”
Lantz and Whitefeather have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
“You heard in the testimony about what these children were going through and it’s horrifying and despicable,” Kanawha County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Debra Rusnak said, according to Metro News Television. “There’s no other way to describe it.”
