No—sometimes they can just be your parents.
At least that was the case with Donald Ray Lantz and Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, a wealthy couple in Sissonville, West Virginia, who found a way to ignore Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation—and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution ending involuntary servitude—and bring back slavery.
“You did not just physically abuse us. You full-out tortured us.”
The white pair adopted five Black children and forced them to work and live in cruel, inhumane conditions, with the kind of vicious behavior that recalls the brutish slaver Simon Legree of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
It worked—that is, until police discovered the brutality on a welfare check and arrested the sadistic duo.
The children—from ages 5 to 16—had been tortured and forced to live in a crude shed, locked in, with only a small porta-potty from the RV, and no lighting or running water. They were forced to sleep on the bare concrete floor, fed little and wore tattered clothing. The sheriff’s office said the children were “deprived of adequate hygienic care and food.”
They were fed mostly peanut butter sandwiches, often leftovers, and forced to dig with their bare hands as part of yard work. They were cursed at constantly, made to endure racist comments and had to use the bathroom while holding up a sheet for privacy against the shed’s security camera.
Most touching and poignant were the children’s testimonies at trial and the letters they provided to be read in court at the sentencing. The oldest child, a girl, testified that she could not understand how they could be so mistreated.
“You did not just physically abuse us. You full-out tortured us,” she said, and called Whitefeather “the actual definition of a monster.”
Another of the children said in court: “I will be something amazing. I will be strong and beautiful. You will always be exactly what you are—horrible.”
The children’s enslavement and horrible living conditions were discovered when a neighbor saw them being locked inside their shed and called the police. When police responded for a welfare check, they had to force the door to the shed open with a crowbar and found the young boy shoeless with open sores on his bare feet.
“There were no accessible windows in the room or way for the children to exit. If there were a medical emergency or fire, the children would be unable to exit the locked room to safety,” the sheriff’s statement said.
“You brought these children to West Virginia, a place that I know as ‘Almost Heaven,’ and you put them in hell.”
The despicable duo were indicted on multiple counts of human trafficking, civil rights violations, use of a minor in forced labor, gross child neglect and child abuse causing injury (Lantz struck one of the children with a piece of PVC pipe). Whitefeather was said to have sprayed four of the children with bear spray, which can cause excruciating pain (in the words of one journalist who was sprayed at a protest: “It took three shots of fentanyl to get me to a place where I wasn’t screaming”).
The children were also forced to stand with their hands on their heads for hours for the pleasure of the malevolent couple.
The indictment states that Whitefeather and Lantz did “knowingly, feloniously and willfully traffic a minor,” and “did recruit, entice and obtain the victim of the offense from a shelter and facility that serves runaway youths, children in foster care, the homeless and victims of human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault.”
“I ask you to remember that Jeanne Whitefeather and Donald Lantz have provided these children with a life sentence,” Madison Tuck, Kanawha County assistant prosecuting attorney, said. “They are beautiful and wonderful children, but they will deal with the effects of the treatment from Whitefeather and Lantz for the rest of their lives.”
Life sentences are pretty much what Whitefeather and Lantz got as well.
As Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers told the cruel couple: “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. And may God have mercy on your souls, because this court will not.”
And she did exactly what she said she would.
On January 29, a Kanawha County jury found Whitefeather, 62, and Lantz, 63, guilty. Judge Akers didn’t just throw the book at them—she threw the entire law library: On March 19, Whitefeather was sentenced to 215 years in prison, eligible for parole in 40 years, and Lantz to 160 years, with parole eligibility in 30 years.
Whitefeather was also convicted of civil rights violations based on race.
Nor did their troubles end there. The oldest daughter and the new foster parents of two of the children have filed two lawsuits against the criminal couple. Attorneys Dante diTrapano and Ben Salango said in a written statement: “These children have been failed by everyone at every turn in their young lives, first by their parents, then by Child Protective Services.
“We intend to hold all those responsible for the horrific acts of abuse accountable.”
So, when Whitefeather and Lantz get out of prison, if they ever do, there’s a good chance they’ll certainly be very old—well into their 80s—and they’ll be broke, deprived of any dirty money they made or saved off of these enslaved children’s forced labor.
Today, the children are with loving, caring families. Whitefeather and Lantz are in prison.
Finally, justice.
