CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A woman accused of forcing her adopted children to do hard farm work with her husband has denied confining two of the children to a shed, despite police finding them in the structure behind a locked gate, news outlets have reported.
Jeanne Kay Whitefeather took over Tuesday as the second week began in the trial of her and her husband, Donald Ray Lantz. Four of the five children are accused of abuse, all of them black. Whitefeather and Lantz, who are both white, face more than a dozen felonies, including forced labor, civil rights violations, human trafficking and aggravated child neglect.
Whitefeather and Lantz were arrested in October 2023 after neighbors called police to report that Lantz had locked the older girl and her teenage brother in the shed and left the Sissonville property.
Whitefeather called the shed “a hangout for teenagers.”
“They weren’t locked up,” Whitefeather testified. “They had a key. They will be able to come and go as they wish.”
But the eldest daughter, now 18 years old, he testified last week unaware of access to a key, which a detective testified earlier was found out of sight on top of a closet in the shed.
The daughter also said that the children were fed a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches at scheduled times and were not allowed to eat at other times, even if they were hungry. But Whitefeather said the children were allowed to use the refrigerator and she prepared food every night.
After the couple was arrested, the five children were placed in the custody of Child Protective Services. The couple adopted five siblings while living in Minnesota. They moved to a farm in Washington state in 2018, before moving to West Virginia in 2023, with the children ranging in age from 5 to 16. The oldest boy is receiving full-time care in a psychiatric facility.
